Pursued by Shadows (8 page)

“I'm sure,” said Harriet crisply. “It was in her letter and on the postmark.”

“I'll file a missing persons report, if you like. And in that case I guess I need that letter,” he added apologetically.

“There was someone watching the house,” said a voice suddenly.

“What's that, ma'am? Oh, hi, Mrs. Franks,” said the officer. “Who was that?”

“Didn't recognize him,” she said. “But he parked his car and got out to watch the house.”

“People do that all the time,” protested the real estate agent. “It's the sign. It's a lovely house.”

“I know that. A young couple was staring in the windows just last night,” she said, looking hard at Sanders. “But this one looked up at the house and then ducked into the bushes on the other side of the street. And stayed there until Amos Cavanaugh drove his truck away and then he left too. Planning on stealing your tools and things, Amos. I'd keep an eye on them, if I were you.”

“Someone was living there,” said Harriet, as they walked away from the house.

“What makes you say that, aside from pure stubbornness?”

“These,” she said, pulling the tissue from her pocket. “Look. There are more in the bathtub drain. They're from someone washing her hair under the shower. And besides, the soap and towels had been used this morning.”

“Why in hell didn't you mention it?”

“Well, just look at it. It's not the right sort of hair. It's brown and fairly long, and Jane has short blond hair. This other hair is red—looks as if it could be the carpenter's. So much for that wide-eyed innocent look.”

“Forget the carpenter,” said Sanders impatiently, “and let's get back to Jane. She had short blond hair two years ago, you said. Was she a natural blonde?”

“Nature didn't make that shade when she handed out hair colours,” said Harriet dryly.

“So maybe she's grown her hair in?”

“It's possible,” said Harriet doubtfully. “But where does that leave us? Supposing she was in town? And living in that house. Anyway, why would the carpenter say— Now that's a stupid question,” she added, shaking her head. “Jane always did bring out the guard dog in people.”

“Do you think she might have been looking for work?” asked John. “With a photographer?”

Harriet looked at him quizzically. “It's possible. She did make that peculiar remark about bringing down the macro.”

“Did you?”

“Of course.”

“Nope,” the man said, throwing the print back at Sanders with scarcely a glance. “Never saw her in my life before.”

“You want to look at it this time?” said Sanders, putting the print down on the counter with great care right in front of him. “Before making up your mind you haven't seen her?”

“I don't have to look at it,” the photographer snarled. “What do you think this place is? Kennedy International? No girl looking remotely like that has walked in here in the last month. And no one, no matter what they looked like, has been in looking for a job. Do I look like someone who could afford to hire an assistant? You must be crazy, mister. And if you don't have any more dumb questions, I have a business to run in here.”

“Sweet man” said Harriet, as they stepped back onto the sidewalk. “It comes from doing baby pictures. Sours the disposition. That's why I never photograph babies. I'm—”

“I know. You don't have to tell me. Why don't we try that place?” said John.

“What is it?” Harriet peered across the street at the dark-fronted building. “An antique store? Why would Jane look for a job in there?”

“I don't know,” said Sanders. “Except that they have a few old photographs in the window. Anyway, the cruise doesn't leave for half an hour. We might as well look.”

“Why not?” said Harriet. “They might have some interesting stuff. You know, five-hundred-dollar chamber pots and things like that,” she added, and began darting her way across the street.

Discreet gold paint on the door announced that Richard Harmon was prepared to sell them antiques and curios. If they could find them. Inside, the shop was very dark, and filled with even darker pieces of furniture, all arranged against the side walls and in a congested heap down the middle, like a highway median, leaving two wide aisles on either side running to the very back. A fog of dust hovered over everything and the shop appeared deserted. In the far corner at the back they could just make out a very old, battered desk at which a man, possibly Mr. Harmon, was examining some sort of document with the aid of a small, bright lamp and a jeweler's glass. As they drifted in his direction, a thump made Harriet glance sideways, and she noticed a boy who looked no more than twelve or thirteen carefully lifting objects from a shelf, dusting them, and setting them back again. “This place is unbelievable,” muttered Harriet. “I expect gnomes and elves to creep out from under the whatnots.”

It took Mr. Harmon at least thirty seconds to admit to noticing that they were standing in front of him. Then with reluctance he covered the document he had been studying with a clean sheet of paper and took the photograph. “Sorry,” he said at once, putting it down. “I haven't. No one like that. Quite a distinctive young lady, too. Hard to miss. Not that many people come in the shop, you know. I tend to remember faces. Especially pretty ones,” he went on, with a leer in Harriet's direction.

The child was approaching in little fits and starts as Harmon spoke. Harriet watched his progress with amusement, and then with a sudden jolt of pity. Once he drew close enough, she could see he was probably in his late teens or older, but painfully thin and small. His eyes, bright with fascination, gave his face an even more sickly and under-nourished cast. “Can I see the picture?” he asked, and snatched it up. “Look, Mr. Harmon,” he said, “I seen this girl. Down by the lake. Remember? She's the girl that man was asking about this morning.”

“What man?” asked Sanders quietly.

“A creep,” the boy said and seemed to shrink into himself. “He looked like a biker—he had dark hair. Big guy.” He shivered. “They come here, you know. Bikers . . .”

John gave Harriet a swift look and turned to the young man. “When did you see this . . .” he started hastily.

“A biker,” interrupted Harmon with contempt. “In here? Really, Tad—I don't know where you get these stories.” He grabbed him around his stick-thin arm with one hand and took the picture away from him with the other. “It's time to go home for supper. It's past four o'clock.” He pivoted him by the arm and shoved him toward the back. “So sorry,” he said quietly as Tad disappeared through a door in the rear wall. “The boy has problems. He's been very sick. But he tries so hard that I go to a great deal of effort to keep him on, in spite of everything. He still has a few schizophrenic obsessive paranoid delusions—bikers, as you can see, are one of them.”

“Schizophrenic obsessive paranoid delusions?” said Harriet, as they walked along the broad grass verge in front of the lake and watched the swallows, frantically busy, darting in and out of municipally constructed multi-occupancy birdhouses. “About bikers?” She shook her head. “I think Harmon is having us on. Although the kid did seem frightened. Not to say seriously underfed.”

“Yeah. Well, whatever it is, I think it's catching,” said Sanders, and ducked. “What I noticed, though,” he said, and paused, running his fingers through his hair, frowning.

“Yes?”

“Well—when you go around with pictures looking for ID, most people take the picture in their hands and give it a really hard look. They're curious, and sometimes they're even trying to be helpful. Even the louts give the picture a good look. Then they shake their heads and mutter something like, ‘Sorry, Charlie, I never seen this one before.' Or maybe they say that she looks kind of familiar but they can't place her. What they don't do is take one quick look and give you some long and complicated reason why they don't know her. Like these two guys. And people who do take one quick look at a picture and say no right away usually have the bastard you're looking for hiding in the back bedroom.”

“But you didn't introduce yourself as a cop. Maybe people aren't the same with nosy civilians.”

“Maybe. It still felt wrong. Which makes me think that our young friend with the schizophrenic—”

“—obsessive paranoid delusions—”

“—might have seen your friend Jane down by this very lake, and have seen a man—biker or not—in the store asking after her.”

“And what in hell does that mean?” asked Harriet.

“That Jane has been here. That she has showered and shampooed her hair in the house on Lake Street, with the full knowledge of the carpenter, who may or may not have been in the shower with her, she has spoken to the photographer, possibly to ask for a job, and she has had some dealings with the antique store. And that for some reason they don't want us to know that she's been here.” John put his arm around Harriet's shoulders and stared out at the lake. A small crowd of hopeful ducks, who hadn't read the sign concerning municipal prohibitions against feeding them, gathered at the water's edge and made small, discontented duck noises.

“You think she's dead, don't you, John? Otherwise they wouldn't be lying like that.”

“They could be sheltering her,” said Sanders, doubtfully. “If she's hiding from Guy Beaumont. It sounds as if he's made it down here as well.”

“The biker,” said Harriet.

“Big, lots of brown hair, menacing-looking. You have to admit it sounds like him. And he's searching for Jane. But why here?”

“I don't know.” Harriet shoved her hands in her jacket pocket and slouched down on the bench. “I just can't see the connection between this little town and whatever is going on in their lives.” She stared at the water for a long, brooding minute, and then unzipped her jacket, took out her Olympus, and began taking pictures of the ducks. “I'm starved,” she said. “Let's go buy some cookies and feed the ducks, and spend the rest of the afternoon going for boat rides and taking pictures and forgetting that we know anyone else in the entire world.”

Eight miles to the south, Jane walked nervously into a very dimly lit barnlike room and followed Amos up a single flight of wooden stairs to a door at the top. He stopped on the landing and looked back at her. For a second, she thought she saw a flash of pain or uncertainty distort his face, and then it resumed its faintly ironic, noncommittal expression. He pushed open the door and stepped back, gesturing to her to precede him.

The contrast was dazzling. The room faced the southwest. It was just as large as the one downstairs, but it danced with sun and dappled reflected light from a window at least eight feet high, and about as much across, which looked out across the lake. “It's nice here this time of year,” said Amos, speaking with a kind of diffidence that Jane hadn't heard in his voice before. “Before all the summer people come.”

“It's very beautiful.” There seemed nothing else to say.

In the corner to her right, sharing the western wall with the window, was a neat, clean, moderately well-equipped kitchen. It would have been open to the rest of the loft, except for a pair of heavy maroon velvet curtains hanging on a thick wooden rod. They looked as if they had been stolen from a theater somewhere and put here to spare those sitting at the round table in front of the window the sight of cooking mess. Jane shook her head.

“Don't blame me,” said Amos, following the direction of her eyes. “They were here when I took the place over. The damned rod is too well built to take down without a hell of a lot of effort.”

Facing her were a chesterfield and a couple of basket chairs, and down at the other end of the room, a double bed. The far wall was heavily curtained as well. “What's behind there?” asked Jane. “The furnace room?”

“Come and see.” She followed him back, past bathroom and closets, to the thick dark green cloth that covered the back wall. Amos pulled the curtains back, revealing a pair of windows and door leading out to a narrow wooden deck that ran the width of the building. “That used to be the entrance,” he said. “When this was servants' quarters to the house up there and completely separate from the boathouse. I demolished the stairs. They were pretty rickety, and people kept turning up on the balcony and peering in, looking for me. You can open the curtains if you want light at this end of the room. But let's close them now,” he added, as he reached for the cord.

When the wall was securely closed off again, Amos took Jane lightly by the shoulders and looked closely at her. “I feel like I just brought a cat into a new house, and if I'm not careful, she'll run off again.” He kissed her lightly. “Maybe I should put butter on your paws,” he said, and bent forward to nuzzle her neck. He moved back, his nose wrinkling. “I hate to complain,” he added, “but you're dusty. And you smell of mildew.”

“It's the damned red wig,” said Jane. “You wear it for a few hours and you'll smell like old shower curtains too. I have an awful feeling mice have been nesting in it. The floor of your truck is not exactly flawless, and that barn you stashed me in is no showplace, either. It was very dirty and uncomfortable—not to say boring—sitting there all that time, you know.”

He touched a finger to her lips and silently began to unbutton her shirt and pants, and to strip her of everything she had on. She stood like a mannequin, with a tiny mannequin's smile, until she picked up each foot delicately as he pulled off shoe, sock, and trouser leg. “The shower,” he said, “is in there.”

“Whose place is this?” asked Jane, fifteen luxurious minutes later, as she rummaged about in her suitcase for something to put on. “And what happens when he comes back?” She ran her hand through her wet hair.

“Don't worry. It's mine. I get this boathouse in return for keeping an eye on the property. I live here, you might say.”

“I thought you lived at your sister's,” she said, slipping on a pair of jeans and a loose shirt.

“I do that too. It depends. My workshop is downstairs.”

“Isn't downstairs for keeping boats in?”

“Well—yes. Originally. But there's plenty of space. I'm not crowded. Come and see.”

The room was huge and gave the impression of airy emptiness. The ceiling arched a good fifteen to twenty feet above their heads; the floor was swept and totally uncluttered. A canoe and a very old racing shell were secured neatly on racks against one wall; the opposite wall was stacked with shelves filled with woodworking materials. Amos unlocked and raised the broad door facing the water and the light from the evening sun, dappled and many-coloured, filled the room, already heady with the smell of freshly cut wood.

But Jane hadn't noticed the door or the dock it led to. She was transfixed, awestruck, in front of a delicate table standing alone in the middle of the room. It looked to her to be alive, as if a fire burned deep in the heart of the wood, glowing through the pale finish. “May I touch it?” she asked.

He nodded.

“It feels like cloth, like some kind of satin,” she said. “But I suppose that's what everyone says. Did you really make it?”

He nodded again. “This was to someone else's design. The trouble with doing your own work is getting enough capital together to buy the right woods for decent-sized pieces. But I'm getting there,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, that's enough of me for now. Let's close up down here.” He shut and fastened the door, reached out a hand to her, and began to pull her upstairs again.

She gravitated nervously toward the large window, staring out at the water as if it could reveal some secret to her that she had to know. Amos's arms were around her, caressing her breast and belly almost before she realized that he had even moved in her direction and desire once more blotted out her fear. His clever hands dealt with her buttons and zippers in an instant, leaving her trembling, in the cool spring evening.

“The more I see of you,” said Jane, falling back on the bed and looking up at him as he pulled off his own clothes, “the more I realize how much trouble I am. I'm just not the kind of woman you want to get yourself mixed up with . . .” Her voice trailed off, depressed. “You don't know the half of it.”