The Impersonator (17 page)

“Take care, miss. There are many cracks in the ground.”

“I certainly shall.”

“You must go now, if you like, Jessie,” said Grandmother, adding that she was perfectly satisfied to sit in the sun while I went to see the landslide.

As happened before, King appeared at my heels the moment I stepped outside the garden walls. Together we threaded our way through the red alders and turned south. Almost at once the ground began its downward slope out of sight of the house. A five-minute walk brought me to a point of land where I could see that the cliffs ahead of me were only half the height of the ones beside the house. Lawrence Carr had situated his summer house at the highest point in the area. To the north of the house, the ground descended to Dexter and the bay; to the south, it sloped more gently to a vulnerable, crumbling coast that was uninhabited and uninhabitable.

My progress was slowed by several large cracks in the earth—like miniature fault lines running parallel to the coastline. All at once I came to a macadam road which was, I realized, the continuation of the one from Dexter that brought us to Cliff House and then snaked south, linking Oregon’s remote coastal towns to the outside world. Few cars came this way, and I saw none today. I did see a discarded wooden A-frame lying on its side with an old pulley, a wooden handbarrow, and some other junk that looked like it had been left behind after the construction of the coastal road a dozen years ago. King and I followed the pavement until it veered away from the ocean.

It didn’t take a geologist to spot the recent avalanche. The new face of the cliff was freshly exposed where a slab of weak rock had collapsed into rubble on the shore, revealing an artist’s palette of earthen colors striped horizontally across the exposed area. As beautiful as it was, nothing could erase the sense that the earth was holding its breath, waiting to release the next landslide.

With King leading the way, I took a slightly different route back. Rounding a large boulder, I spotted him poised at the edge of the largest crevice I had yet seen, sniffing suspiciously. This one must have been three feet wide and a good deal longer; like the rest, it ran parallel to the cliff edge a hundred feet away. I wondered when this chunk of high land was destined to meet the sea. In a hundred years? A thousand? Next week? I peered cautiously into the dark hole and saw nothing but black. Cool, fresh-smelling air drifted into my face. It would be very easy to fall here, and no one would be the wiser. Someone could trip in the dark, or the earth at the edge could collapse. Could Jessie have stumbled that day she disappeared seven years ago? The fall would probably prove fatal. Had they searched these crevices when she went missing? Oliver would know. But then I remembered that Jessie had vanished during the day, not at night, so toppling into a crevice wasn’t a likely theory.

Being pushed, however, did not depend upon daylight or darkness.

“Don’t get too close, King,” I warned, looking around nervously. “Come!” I snapped my fingers and motioned to him to follow.

Chen was where I had left him weeding the flower beds, with Grandmother nearby. Briefly I told him about the large crevice and my idea to rope it off. “There are many such in that low ground,” he said over his shoulder. “No one can put fences around them all. No one goes there.”

“You’re probably right. Do you have some scissors? I think I’ll cut some of these pretty things for my room. Chrysanthemums, did you say?”

He looked around at the other flowers. “Why not pick some roses?”

“My room is full of roses. They are beautiful and quite fragrant, but these chrysanthemums are so cheerful, I think I’ll put some in a vase by my bed.”

I thought I saw him scowl as he bent over his basket. “There are black-eyed Susans over there.” He stood and pointed to a bed of exuberant yellow blossoms several feet away. “See? They are very nice, with tall stems. Rather like daisies. Some call them brown-eyed Susans. You can decide, brown-eyed or black-eyed.”

“Perhaps I should get permission from Aunt Victoria first, is that what you mean?”

“No, no. She would be delighted for you to pick whatever you like. Here.” He handed me some clippers. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and the drop in temperature sent Grandmother back into the house. I snipped a couple dozen chrysanthemum blossoms, choosing the tallest stems. To please Chen, I picked a few of the black-eyed Susans as well and left him to his weeding. In the kitchen, Marie gave me a vase and I arranged them carelessly.

Aunt Victoria passed me on my way to my room. “There you are, dear,” she said cheerily. “Henry just called saying he was bringing a guest to dinner tonight. Oh, how lovely!”

“I hope you don’t mind, I’ve raided your flower beds.” I held up my vase for her inspection.

“Mind? Gracious no, dear, I’m thrilled to find someone who shares my interest. The girls don’t care a fig for gardening and the boys—well … You must give instructions to Chen whenever you like. Change anything. Variety is the essence of a pleasure garden. Although,” she said, peering closely at the flowers, “I am surprised Chen let you pick those.”

“I thought I imagined his reluctance.”

“Oh, the silly man. He didn’t want them in the garden at all, but I insisted. In China, chrysanthemums are thought to bring bad luck. What a superstitious lot those Orientals are!”

“Bad luck? How can a pretty flower bring bad luck?”

“The Chinese think chrysanthemums symbolize death. They use them for funerals and on graves. To give them to someone would be to wish them dead.”

Vaudeville harbors some peculiar superstitions—peacock feathers bring bad luck and whistling in dressing rooms courts disaster, while touching a humpback’s hump or wearing your undershirt inside out guarantees good fortune—but when she was alive, my mother had no patience for such silliness. Neither did I. Defiantly, I set the lovely daisy-faced flowers square in the center of my dressing table.

23

Continuing my exploring, I decided to see what the rooms above me looked like, and I headed to the door at the end of the hallway. At first I felt like an intruder. Then I remembered it was my house, and I strode up the stairs with all the confidence ownership imparts.

According to Uncle Oliver, the third floor had never been used. Intended for large house parties, it consisted of a ballroom across the front and numerous guest bedrooms in each wing. Had Blanche and Lawrence Carr lived, they would no doubt have hosted weeklong affairs throughout the summer season, where society swells would sail their yachts into Dexter Bay and spend the week hunting, fishing, riding, and gossiping. But the Fates had decreed otherwise. The vast ballroom echoed eerily as I walked through.

I had descended the stairs to the second floor just as Henry and his dinner guest came through the front door. Hand on the railing that overlooked the entrance hall, I paused to watch the scene unfold from a balcony vantage point.

The two men entered quietly and hung their hats on the hat rack. The guest stood as tall as Henry but lacked Henry’s paunch. They seemed roughly the same age. “I’ll get her,” I heard Henry say and I assumed he meant his mother. Before he could move, Ross entered stage left and shook hands with the newcomer. Hearing voices, the twins poked their heads around the corner. I decided the scene looked harmless and began to descend.

“Ah, here she is,” said Henry as he caught sight of me on the landing, “your prodigal sister home at last! I’ve brought your brother home for dinner tonight, Jessie.”

My legs exhibited a will of their own and continued their slow descent, but the rest of my body tensed with alarm. Relax, keep going, said some part of my brain. It’s just another trick. If Jessie had a brother, Oliver would have told you. If Jessie had a brother, he would have inherited before the Carrs.

“Well … your prodigal
half
sister, I should say.” Henry smirked. “Hasn’t she grown up grand?”

At that moment Aunt Victoria swept into the foyer. She took one look at Henry’s guest, stifled a gasp, and turned crimson. Henry, clearly put out by his mother’s reaction, nudged his guest forward just as I reached the bottom stair.

“Hello, Jessie,” the stranger stammered. “It’s been a long time. You’re looking very grown-up.” He blushed furiously.

What we had here was another, rather pathetic version of the Fake Grandmother ploy. No doubt if Henry had known that particular trap had already been sprung by the trustees, he would not have set it a second time. Yet something was off. Aunt Victoria did not quickly correct Henry as I expected her to. She knew this person. She was biting her bottom lip with indecision. Henry had somehow ensnared his mother as well as me.

The “brother” himself looked monstrously ill at ease. His full lips were pressed into a tight line, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot like a performer caught before a hostile audience. Clueless as I was, I felt a moment’s sympathy for his predicament.

“What game are we playing now, Henry?” I sighed dramatically, my eyes locked on the stranger even as I spoke to my cousin.

“Well, naturally I thought Jessie would enjoy seeing her half brother again—”

Why was Aunt Victoria silent? Why did she not correct Henry? Could this man really be Jessie’s half brother? If so, why had Oliver not warned me? With no idea which way to go, I decided my only recourse was to throw a tantrum.

“I have lost patience with you and your silly tricks!” I said forcefully. “I meant it when I said I could prove I was Jessie, and I can. I can tell you things only Jessie would know.” I warmed to my theme, turning to the family one by one as my voice grew more strident with each example. “I can tell you which room Uncle Charles used for his sickroom, I can tell you why Santa left lumps of coal in Ross’s stocking, I can tell you the name of Henry’s dog buried under the big tree out back, I can tell you how mad Ross was when I tore out the last pages of his Tom Swift books, I can tell you why I smashed the girls’ favorite dolls—” I skidded to a halt and addressed an aside to Valerie and Caroline: “I’m very sorry about that, by the way. I should have known you two didn’t break my china cat on purpose.” Ignoring Ross’s open mouth, I turned back to Henry and resumed my tirade. “Nobody but Jessie would know these things. Well, get your childish tricks in now because I won’t be here much longer. I am leaving as soon as the trustees submit the results of their investigation, which I hope will be soon because I am sick, sick,
sick
of this!”

While I’d been raving, Uncle Oliver and Grandmother appeared at the top of the stairs, probably in time to overhear everything. Aunt Victoria found her composure at last and sidled up, draping one arm around my shoulder. “There, there, Jessie, we believe you.” She glared at Henry, who wasn’t looking the least bit penitent, and took a deep breath. “And may I have the pleasure of introducing you to David Murray. He is your father’s son. I’m afraid none of us knew of his existence until last March when Henry met him in Portland. Mr. Murray, may I present Jessie Carr?”

“Pleased to meet you,” he mumbled without quite meeting my eye.

So that was it. My, my. Lawrence Carr’s bastard boy. That explained Aunt Victoria’s shock at seeing him in her house and her mortification at having to introduce him socially. Well, there was a bastard in every family. I was proof of that.

I examined him during the introductions. Perhaps it was as well that I hadn’t noticed the family resemblance at once because I might have made the wrong choice and fallen for Henry’s trick, pretending to know someone Jessie could not have known. I drew a deep breath to steady my nerves. It had been a close call. This David fellow did look remarkably like the Lawrence Carr I remembered from his wedding photo—handsome, fair-haired, with blue eyes, but this man was rugged where Lawrence Carr was soft, and tanned by the sun where Lawrence Carr was pale. David hadn’t had the easy life of a rich man. Bastards never do.

“And my daughters, Caroline and Valerie,” Aunt Victoria was saying, “and Jessie’s uncle, Mr. Oliver Beckett, and his mother, Mrs. Beckett. And you have met Ross.”

I glanced at Oliver. He looked as if his heart had stopped. And I knew why. Another heir to worry about.

“How is it no one ever told us about Jessie’s half brother?” Caroline whined. “We never get to know anything!”

“It wasn’t any of your concern.” The twins exchanged exasperated glances and Aunt Victoria was forced to continue. “He was born before your uncle Lawrence married your aunt Blanche. Before they had even met.”

“So? He’s still our cousin, isn’t he?” continued Caroline, like a dog with a bone.

“In a sense … distantly…”

Valerie—smarter than her sister if not as bold—turned to David with a perplexed crease in her brow. “Then why isn’t your name Carr, like ours?”

Aunt Victoria hastened to interrupt any reply the bastard might have made.

“It was a different sort of marriage. Not entirely legal. Those children usually take their mother’s last name. Now, enough of this rudeness, prying into other people’s personal matters! Since we’re all present and accounted for, we may as well go into the dining room … Ross, would you please select a wine from the cellar? I’ll go tell Marie to put dinner ahead.” Poor Aunt—convention wouldn’t permit her to dine with a bastard and manners wouldn’t allow her to throw him out. “Jessie, darling, you sit on my left and Mr. Murray, you on my right, please.” And she marched toward the kitchen, sending me a look that promised to reveal all at a later time, if only I would cooperate for the present.

As we filtered into the dining room to take our assigned seats, Henry made a show of gallantry, holding my chair.

“Round two to you, Miss Fraud,” he said, bending close to my ear. “That was quite a performance in there. You may have bamboozled some people but not me. I know you’re not Jessie, and I’ll prove it, sooner or later.” I murmured something to Valerie on my left and pretended I hadn’t heard him.

The only person at that table more uncomfortable than Aunt Victoria was the bastard himself, who must have realized he’d been set up as much as I. He sat quietly through the first course, eyeing the others to see which spoon to use and speaking only when spoken to. Henry carried on gaily as though nothing untoward had occurred. Oliver had regained his composure once he understood David was illegitimate and therefore no threat. Aunt Victoria valiantly led the conversation through several thoroughly dull but socially acceptable topics, but even she grew alarmed after we had exhausted the best sort of books for Dexter’s new lending library and the main course had not yet appeared.