The Glass Butterfly (20 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: The Glass Butterfly
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He smiled up at her. “Most people don't get that, but yes. Like the composer. A third cousin, or something.”
“I'm Paulette Chambers.”
“Right. We spoke this morning. Nice to meet you in person.” He listened to the dog's chest with a stethoscope. When he palpated the dog's belly, the dog gave a slight groan. “It's okay, my friend,” the vet said in a reassuring tone. “It's okay. It all feels good.”
Tory watched, enchanted by the gentleness of this tall man. When he stood up, he filled the little exam room, towering nearly a foot above her. “He's thin,” Dr. Menotti said. “Probably hasn't been eating much.”
“He wandered in from the beach. He was soaking wet and covered in sand. He seems a lot stronger this morning than he did last night.”
The vet nodded. “He was probably more exhausted than sick. He might have been running on the beach for quite a while.”
“But how did he get there?”
Dr. Menotti shrugged. “It's hard to say. It could be he wandered away from one of the vacation homes, or jumped out of a car when someone stopped in town. I'll get the scanner. Just wait here a moment.”
He went out through a back door. Tory sat down on a padded bench that filled one corner of the room, and the dog thrust his head into her lap. She fondled his ears. He pushed closer with a slight, anxious whimper, and she bent to press her cheek to his silky head. It felt so good to feel close to another living being that for the second time that day, her heart fluttered. “I know,” she whispered. “I don't want to think about it, either.”
Ice Woman was definitely melting. She wondered if the process could be reversed.
The vet came back, and Tory sat up, embarrassed to be found hugging a stray dog. Dr. Menotti said, nodding toward the dog, “Kind of a sweet guy, isn't he?”
“I think so. I don't know much about dogs.”
“Really? You two have hit it off, though. That's nice.” He came to crouch beside the dog again. He had a white plastic instrument in his hand, and he held it up to the back of the dog's neck. Tory could just see the little screen, upside down, flicker with numbers. The vet sat back on his haunches, and turned the scanner so she could see it right side up. “There's a chip there, all right,” he said.
“Oh,” was all Tory could say. She found she was gripping the dog's fur, and she made her fingers relax. “Oh, I see.”
The vet was watching her. “You were hoping there wouldn't be.”
“No, no, I—I just—Oh, it's silly. But I sort of like this dog.”
“And he likes you, obviously.” He stood up, unfolding his long thin frame with surprising ease. “We'll call the microchip company, see what turns up.”
Tory came to her feet, too, but she kept her gaze on the dog. “Okay,” she managed to say. The dog pressed close to her again, as if he sensed her emotions.
Dr. Menotti spoke as gently to Tory as he had to the dog. “In the meantime, he might as well stay with you, if you're willing. I can't see anything wrong with him, and there's no point in sending him to the shelter if we don't have to.”
Tory nodded. “Yes, please do leave him with me. If you'll just tell me what he should eat, what I need to do . . .”
“We'll send some dog food home with you, and now you have a leash and collar. Otherwise—” He paused, and she looked up at him. He was watching her closely, and she felt her cheeks warm. “You're doing just fine, Ms. Chambers. The dog is in good hands.”
“Paulette,” she said.
“Paulette. Call me Hank.” He smiled. “You and your friend here are almost my first patients in Cannon Beach. I'll give you a call tomorrow, if you'll leave your telephone number with Shirley.”
At the reception desk, Tory brought out her wallet as Shirley began adding up the cost of the collar, the leash, the food, and the office visit. Hank Menotti said, “No, Shirley. Let's wait until we see if we find the owner. Whoever that is should pay this bill, not Ms. Chambers.”
Shirley acquiesced, but she scowled as she said, “I'll keep the bill in a file.”
Tory said, “Thank you, Shirley.” Then, prompted by some mischievous instinct, she turned and put out her hand to the vet. “And thanks, Hank,” she said, with a deliberate emphasis on the first name. She saw by the twitch of his lips that he understood. He shook her hand, nodded to the disapproving Shirley, and disappeared back into the exam room.
Tory gave Shirley a pointed smile as she led the dog out of the office.
As the early sunset glimmered over the ocean, Tory took the dog out on the beach for a run. She left the chain collar on, as that seemed to make people more comfortable, but she didn't bother with the leash. If he wanted to leave, he would leave. She didn't think he would. He waited for her as she locked the front door, and then as she unlatched the little gate. Not until they reached the beach did he start to run, chasing up and down the packed sand, his tail up and his tongue flying from his open mouth like a limp pink flag.
Tory trudged along the sand. It was really the first moment she had been able to ponder her dream of the night before. Caused by the dog's arrival, perhaps?
The dog seemed to have a limit to how far he wanted to be from her. He ran in front and then behind, but never more than a couple hundred yards away. A cold breeze sprang up as the sun dropped below the water, and Tory pulled her knit cap down over her forehead, tucking the strands of her hair underneath it. The dog frolicked at her side, then raced in circles around her on the wet sand. They must look so ordinary, a woman and her dog having a romp on the beach before dinner. She wished it was true. She wished with all her being that when she went back to the cottage, she could find Jack there, his big sneakers up on the little coffee table, playing a video game or texting his friends. He would be so pleased about the dog. She wouldn't care if he didn't say much. Just knowing he was there would be enough.
But that was fantasy. Jack thought she was dead. And the dog belonged to someone else.
She had been gone for two months. Jack would have started to adjust to her loss, just as she had adjusted to the loss of her grandmother, her mother, and later her father. She supposed she was beginning to adjust, too, to come to terms with the realization that she would never see her son again. It would mean never feeling whole, never feeling complete, but she had only herself to blame. The file lying in her drawer—and the threat it represented—held power over both of them.
The swift darkness encroached upon the beach, swallowing the big rock and the low dunes with their spears of marsh grass. A few lights glowed here and there through the dusk, but the holiday renters hadn't come in force yet. Scattered stars pricked the marine layer of cloud, but gave no illumination. Tory called, “Hey, dog! Let's go get our dinner!”
The dog, evidently untroubled by his lack of a name, bounded toward her, tongue and tail flying, and trotted by her side as she made her way up the dark beach toward the house.
Her step faltered when she saw the strange car outside the cottage. In the darkness, it was hard to tell the make, but it was an SUV of some kind, dark and boxy. It loomed behind the yellow Beetle. Tory had left the kitchen light on in the cottage, but the yard was dark. She approached the gate warily, the dog close at her heels.
When the door to the SUV opened, the interior light went on, and she saw who her visitor was. “Oh!” she said, relieved. “Dr. Menotti.”
He smiled at her as he swung his long legs out of the car. The dog dashed ahead of Tory to sniff at the vet's shoes, then wind against him to be petted. Hank said, “I thought I'd come and give you the news in person.”
Instantly, Tory's heart sank. Of course. He had found the dog's owner.
She tried to smile at him as she opened the gate, led the way up to the front door, and fished out her key. Her hand, she saw with dismay, was trembling, and she blinked to stop the stinging of her eyes.
It was ridiculous, of course, that she should cry about a dog. She who hadn't shed a single tear in all these weeks—over the loss of her son, her home, her livelihood—she could cry over a dog that wasn't even hers, a dog she had met only yesterday. It was textbook therapy material.
17
Ah! quella donna, mi fa tanta paura!
 
Ah! that woman frightens me so!
 
—Butterfly,
Madama Butterfly,
Act Three
N
ight had fallen over the wooded hills by the time Jack drove the Escalade back from town, past Tory's tidy mailbox, and up the long driveway. The house ahead was dark. The mail—what there was of it—rested in a pile on the passenger seat. He had taken a box at the post office, and directed all mail to be delivered there. It was an instinctive decision, and he hadn't told Chet or Kate about it. He hadn't told anyone except the manager of the post office, an incurious sort who asked no questions.
The mail looked to be mostly Christmas cards, a few circulars, one or two bills. Jack still felt nervous when he saw the bills. Kate had helped him sort things out, just as Chet had promised, but the Lake finances were in a precarious limbo—no income without Tory's practice, but no life insurance until the death declaration was official. She had enough in savings to cover the mortgage and utilities for a few months, but after that he would really need the insurance.
That bothered him, and left him staring at the stack of bills with a sick feeling. If he took the life insurance, it was like giving up on her. It didn't feel right, but he didn't know what he could do. His school was expecting him back in mid-January, but how could he go back to classes, go back to college life, with his mother out there somewhere, possibly alone and afraid?
He'd tried to keep himself busy. Since Thanksgiving he had spent every day working around the place, preparing Tory's garden for winter, repairing anything he could find that was broken, keeping the house and the kitchen clean. Well, except for his bedroom. The clutter and mess there comforted him, made him feel less as if everything in his life had changed. Chet and Kate thought he was being mature and responsible. He didn't tell them that he was keeping the house ready for Tory's return. He didn't want to see that pitying look they would bend on him, the secret worried glance they would exchange.
When Kate said she was sure the death declaration would come in January, so he could collect the life insurance, he kept his head down so she wouldn't see the expression on his face. She no doubt thought that was grief.
It wasn't. It was anger. Not at Kate, but at whoever, or whatever, had driven his mother away from her home.
He pulled the car into the garage, carefully turning off the motor before he pushed the button to close the door. He gathered up the little stack of mail and the bag of groceries, and went in through the door to the kitchen. He flicked on the light, then stood, thunderstruck.
The kitchen—Tory's beautiful kitchen—lay in ruins. Drawers had been pulled out, their contents strewn across the floor. The pot rack with its expensive Le Creuset cookware had been ripped out of the ceiling to crash on to the glass-topped stove beneath it. Cupboard doors had been wrenched from their hinges, and the china and glassware swept out to smash on the tiled floor. The pantry door stood open, and Jack could see from where he stood that everything on the shelves had been dumped on the floor, packages opened and emptied. Flour and sugar and coffee and pasta lay in mounds on the floor, and someone had kicked through them, leaving trails of black coffee grounds, white crystals, and crushed macaroni, all leading to the litter of glass and porcelain in the center of the kitchen.
Jack stared at the mess. An icy feeling of dread crept up the back of his legs and into the base of his spine. He took one shallow breath before he crossed the kitchen, sneakers crunching on the mess, to peek into the office. He knew, by the cold breeze that chilled his face, what he would find there.
The sliding glass door to Tory's office lay in great transparent shards across the carpet. Her desk drawers were all pulled out, papers and pens and paper clips spilled everywhere. The file cabinet, too, had been opened, but had been empty, all the client files removed. Tory's private filing cabinet was also open, the files tossed this way and that. It looked as if the pictures had been thrown at the wall, and the standing lamp pushed over.
Someone was looking for something, no doubt, as with the mail. But someone was also angry. Furious. You didn't have to be a therapist, Jack thought, to see it. There was so much unnecessary destruction. It was excessive, melodramatic. It was as if someone had indulged in a giant temper tantrum.
As he turned, with glass crunching underfoot, he heard something else, some faint bump or creak. He froze, listening. He felt like a deer caught in headlights, not knowing which way to jump. The sound—if sound it had been—didn't come again, but Jack's nervous system was screaming alarms now. He seized the phone from Tory's desk, and punched 9-1-1 at the same time he strode toward the living room.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” The woman's voice sounded slightly bored, and Jack, staring at the wreckage of the sound system and the bookcases in the living room, could barely speak.
“I—someone has—there's been a break-in,” he finally said. The word seemed meaningless as he spoke it, a word meant for broken windows or jimmied door locks, stolen computers or television sets. The devastation around him was so thorough, and so hateful, that he didn't think he knew the right word to describe it.
They exchanged a few words, he and the 911 dispatcher. Someone, she told him, was on the way. Jack stood at the bottom of the staircase, surrounded by the ruins of his mother's house, and dialed the Binghams' number. There was no answer. He left a terse message, trying to sound as calm as he could, but asking for Chet's help.
He heard the siren coming up the hill from town, and he crossed the mess of the living room to open the front door. The revolving lights on the patrol car flashed through the bare limbs of the trees, ghost lights in red and blue. The siren grew louder and louder as the car turned into the driveway and raced up the hill. When the patrol car stopped, gravel sprayed over the lawn. The siren ceased with a loud chirp, but the lights still spun, red, blue, red, blue, casting garish reflections across the dark windows of the house.
It seemed inevitable that the officer who climbed out of the patrol car was Ellice Gordon. The tingle in Jack's skull began the moment he saw her pacing toward him, carrying an enormous flashlight, its light dancing across the dark grass. He watched her come, his pulse pounding at the base of his throat. He had to force himself to stand where he was, to stand as tall as he could.
“Officer,” he said, when she was close enough. He wished Chet had been home when he called. And he wished the sheriff's office had sent any other deputy but this one.
“Hi, Jack,” she said. The look she turned up to him was unreadable. Her hair was so short beneath her sheriff's cap that in the darkness he could not have distinguished the color. She came up on the porch, and he remembered how tall she was. “You told the dispatcher you had a break-in?”
Wordlessly, he pushed the front door open, and stood aside for her to go in. He followed, and flicked on the overhead light. It was a chandelier, with five small bulbs around a large central one, and its light threw the whole mess into sharp focus.
The deputy whistled, a long, low sound. Beside her, Jack surveyed the wreckage afresh, and his skin began to burn with fury.
Ellice Gordon said, “Any idea who would want to do this?”
Jack blurted, without thinking, “Are you kidding? Whoever did this is out of his mind! I don't know people like that!”
The deputy turned her head slowly, looking down at him. Her pale eyes had a flat look to them, as if no light reflected from her irises. He felt caught by her gaze, like a rodent mesmerized by a snake. “Tell me what happened,” she said. Her voice was flat, too, unemotional.
“I don't know what happened. I was downtown this afternoon, picking up—doing some errands, groceries, that sort of thing. When I came home—” He gestured with his hand, and saw that it was shaking.
She saw it, too. “No need to be frightened, Jack. Not now.”
His jaw began to ache. He said through gritted teeth, “I'm not scared. I'm pissed.”
She nodded. “Sure you are. I would be, too.” She flicked off her flashlight. She walked forward to the kitchen door, where glass and porcelain bits sparkled in the light. She glanced toward the office, taking in the smashed glass door. “You found a way to lock it, I see,” she said in an offhand fashion.
“Yeah. Didn't do much good.”
She turned toward the staircase. “Any damage upstairs?”
“I haven't been up there. I—” He was going to tell her he thought he had heard a noise, but now he didn't want to say it. It made him sound like a scared kid. “I just thought I should call you guys first.”
“Smart. I'll go up and have a look, if that's okay.”
“Sure. Yeah.” Jack stayed close behind her as she climbed, her long legs taking the stairs two a time. He wondered if she'd been upstairs before, if Tory had invited her up, or sent her up after a session. There was no reason for that he could think of. If clients needed a bathroom, they used the powder room off the office. The deputy seemed to know where she was going, though, passing his room with a cursory glance, pressing on toward the doorway of his mother's bedroom.
She stood there, turning the flashlight in her fingers. He looked past her shoulder. Nothing was broken here. At first glance, in fact, it looked undisturbed, as if whatever maelstrom had hit the downstairs had not reached to the second floor. “He didn't bother up here, I guess,” Ellice Gordon said.
“I guess,” Jack said.
“So, it looks the same to you as when your mother disappeared?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
The deputy took a last look at the bedroom, then turned away and started downstairs. She pressed a button on her shoulder radio and started talking to someone.
Jack was about to follow her, but first he took a closer look at Tory's bedroom. He'd been trying to keep things clean here, but he wasn't the greatest duster. In fact, he'd told himself to get in here with a cloth and polish her bureau, the marble top of her bedside stand, the curtain rods and windowsills. There had been dust on the surfaces, and there still was. There were tracks in it, though. And there was a smudge on the mirror, one he could see even from the doorway.
“Hey, Jack,” the deputy said from the bottom of the stairs.
His head buzzed now so he could barely hear her. He turned and looked down.
“You shouldn't stay here alone,” she said.
Was it a warning, or a threat? He didn't like it, either way. He said, “I'm not going to leave the house empty. Especially now.”
“He could come back,” she said. Was it his imagination, or did her hand twitch above the gun in its holster at her hip?
“Yeah. But I'm not going.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she made a gesture that seemed to say, “Up to you.” “You need to go through the mess, see if you can figure out if anything's missing.”
“I will.”
“We'll make a report for your insurance company. You'll get an incident number.”
“Aren't you going to—I don't know, check for fingerprints or something?”
Her smile was patronizing and dismissive at the same time. “It's not like on TV, I'm afraid,” she said. “Unless someone's hurt, you know—or there's a really big theft—we don't do that. Actually,” she added, shrugging, “we'll probably never get this guy. It's too bad, but it's the way it is.”
That didn't sound right to Jack, but he didn't know how to press her. He also didn't know who the insurance company was, but he figured he could find it, somewhere in the trashed office. Kate would help—again. And Chet would help him repair the door.
They would want him to come and stay with them, of course, and it was tempting. It would be great to sleep one night without jumping at every creak the house made. His mother would want him to go to the Binghams'.
He wouldn't do it, though. He'd be damned if he'd give in to whoever did this, whoever was watching his mail, spying on his house. He stood in the front doorway, watching the deputy back and turn her patrol car. He didn't move until her taillights disappeared down the slope.
When he was alone again, Jack turned on the outside lights, and went out into the cold to the garden shed. There was a hatchet there, on the wall next to Tory's array of other tools—pliers, loppers, a shovel and a rake, a saw, a hoe, various trowels and hammers and wrenches.
He paused a moment, remembering how deft she was with all these things, how competently she had built raised boxes, repaired broken steps, cultivated her garden. Why had it irritated him so? It wasn't as if she had a choice. There was no one else to do those things for her. It would have been nice, he thought wryly, to have her able hands here now, to help him sweep up broken glass, sift through shards of porcelain and pottery for anything worth saving, and figure out whether it was possible to put the house to rights again.

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