Widow's Tears (9 page)

It was much more difficult to get to the restaurant than Augustus had thought, for the streets were running full to the gutters, the rain was coming down in sheets, and the gale-force wind turned his umbrella inside out and tore it from his hands before he was fairly out the door. By the time he and his client arrived at the restaurant, they were wet through.

But Ritter's was warm and bright and bustling and the two men arrived just in time to be shown to seats at a table near the front window of the large, high-ceilinged room. The restaurant, which occupied the ground floor of a brick building that housed a second-floor printing shop, was popular with the men who represented the city's increasingly powerful financial interests.
They came to discuss business over drinks and good food in congenial company. Today's storm might have made them a little jumpy, but they enjoyed a lighthearted moment when someone pointed out that there were thirteen diners in the room and wondered if it was bad luck. Stanley Spencer, a steamship agent for the Elder-Dempster and North German Lloyd lines, replied loudly, “You can't frighten me. I'm not superstitious.”

Joining the general laughter, Augustus and his companion ordered cocktails from the bar, as well as a large platter of fresh oysters and fried shrimp, to be followed by the house specialty, steaks as big as a dinner plate with sides of fried onions.

“Rare,” Augustus said in a jocular tone to the white-jacketed waiter. “I want to hear it moo.”

But the men did not get their steaks. Before the waiter could turn in the order, the gusting wind muscled off the building's roof. The brick walls of the second-story print shop gave way. The floor joists, fastened to headers with twenty-penny nails, snapped loose with the gun-shot sounds of cracking wood. Only a few men had time to scramble for safety under the bar before the print shop collapsed and a torrent of bricks, desks, chairs, printing equipment, and two massive printing presses cascaded into the dining room.

Five men died, including the unsuperstitious Stanley Spencer. Five others were badly injured. The café's owner sent one of the waiters for a doctor, whose office was located in the nearby Strand. On his way, the waiter was swept off his feet by a surging wave from the bay. He was drowned.

Augustus Blackwood was among the dead. By the time his body was pulled from the wreckage and someone thought to call his wife with the tragic news, the telephone exchange was flooded. The telephones were no longer working anywhere in the city.

But there was worse to come. Much worse.

Ruby left her small suitcase in the car and walked up the back path, the potted mugwort in one hand, the pie box in the other, and her purse over her shoulder. The house, gaunt and misshapen, leaned toward her, watching her as if it, too, like the woman with the roses, had been waiting for her and was glad she had come at last. She ducked her head, shivering.

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

“Ruby!”

It was Claire, apparently alerted by Rawlings, waiting eagerly on the back porch, which wrapped itself like a gallery around the back of the house. “Ruby!” she cried. “Oh Ruby, I'm so glad you've come!” And with that, she held out her arms and burst into a storm of sobs.

Immediately touched, Ruby pushed her apprehensions away, put everything down, and held her friend close. “Well, golly,” she murmured against Claire's hair, “if you're so glad, how come you're crying, huh?”

Claire stepped back and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. She was wearing denim cutoffs, a pink boat-necked shirt with a coffee stain on the front, and sneakers. Her usually neat chestnut hair was disheveled, and the skin around her caramel-colored eyes was swollen and bruised-looking. Ruby was taken aback to see how much weight she had lost since the last time they'd been together, at Brad's memorial service. She looked just plain awful.

“I'm crying because…Well, damn it, Ruby, you're one of my oldest friends and I haven't seen you in forever. I can cry if I want to, can't I?” Claire stage-managed a smile, but Ruby, looking closely, thought that she looked exhausted, as if she hadn't been sleeping well.

“Cry as much as you want to, it's okay.” Ruby spoke in a comforting tone, although she had the uneasy feeling that it really wasn't okay. There
was something very fragile about Claire. “I'm here to rescue you. From whatever.” She hoisted the boxed pie. “See? I even brought dessert. Pie to die for, straight from Royers Cafe. Oh, and a plant from China Bayles. Mugwort. Not much to look at, but it has other good qualities.”

That brought a real smile. “Ruby, you are a saint.” Claire led the way through the back door and into the old-fashioned kitchen.

“What? For a little pie and some mugwort, I've been canonized? What would I get if I—” Ruby put her bag and the mugwort on the table and looked around in wide-eyed dismay. “Wow,” she whispered. “Like…just, wow.”

On her first visit, Ruby had missed the kitchen. It was huge, with one long wall of ceiling-high glass-fronted cupboards filled with china and crystal. A mammoth black iron cookstove stood against one wall with a small four-burner gas stove beside it, and next to that, a pine-topped worktable and a hanging rack of pots and pans, old and well used. Beside the pot rack was a small blackboard with a piece of chalk and an eraser in the chalk tray.
Menus
was printed at the top in old-fashioned script. Below was what looked like Claire's shopping list: bread, milk, yogurt, coffee.

On the opposite wall, beneath a window, was a rust-stained porcelain sink that looked like it belonged in an antique shop. A round-shouldered 1950s Crosley Shelvador refrigerator hunched against another wall under an old-fashioned clock that said it was just a little past one. The floor was dark green linoleum, worn through in front of the sink and table. The walls were a lighter green, dingy and darkened with smoke over the cook stove. A round oak pedestal table and two wooden chairs stood in the middle of the room. In the middle of the table was a crystal vase filled with fragrant sweet peas and iris, with sprigs of parsley and rosemary and trailing stems of vinca.

“That's exactly what I said when I saw it,” Claire replied. Her voice was thin and reedy. “Wow. You could cook for an army in here.”

There was a long silence while Ruby took it all in. “Well, I hope you're not cooking on
that,
” she said at last, pointing to the iron stove.

Claire shook her head. “No, but my great-aunt Hazel cooked on it until she died. Which is maybe
why
she died.” She chuckled wryly. “I'm just kidding. Mom talked Aunt Hazel into getting the gas stove installed, and a water heater, too, so there's hot water for laundry and baths. But to tell the truth, I haven't been doing a whole lot of cooking since…for a long time,” she added in an apologetic tone. “Soup and sandwiches are usually enough for me. I hope you didn't come for the gourmet food.”

“Hey,” Ruby said lightly, “who needs gourmet? We're having an adventure, aren't we? It's like being away at camp or something. We can live off the land. We can roast weenies over a fire in the backyard and get all sticky with s'mores. Or we can drive into Round Top and pig out to our heart's content, which I highly recommend, come to think of it.” Claire needed to get some real meals under her belt, Ruby thought. She had always been slender. Now she was much too thin. Taking a breath, Ruby added, “Aren't you going to show me around?”

“Y…es.” Claire was hesitant. “But maybe it would be good if we talked a little bit first. You probably have lots of questions.”

Questions?
Ruby thought of the woman with the basket of white roses and shivered. Yes, lots of questions, although she wasn't sure that Claire would have any answers.

“Sure,” Ruby said easily. “If there's something cold to drink in the refrigerator, we could have a piece of the world-famous pie Saint Ruby has brought just for you. As you say, it's been forever since we've been together. We need to catch up.”

“Iced tea?” Claire opened the refrigerator door and pulled a dinky metal ice cube tray out of the tiny, frost-crusted freezer, which was just
about big enough for the tray and a quart of ice cream. The ice cube tray looked as antique as the fridge.

“Super.” Ruby opened the pie box. “Knife? Forks? Plates?”

Getting out a pitcher of tea, Claire nodded toward the cupboards. “Over there. You're bound to find something.” Half to herself, she added, “I can't figure out why there are so many dishes. It's like somebody was planning to do some serious entertaining—half the county, maybe. It's the same with the linens. There are two linen closets, stuffed full of old stuff. High quality, but really old, all of it monogrammed with a
B
, for Blackwood, I suppose. A lot of it has never been used.”

Ruby pulled open a drawer and found the silver, opened a cupboard and took down two small plates. “When did you get here?”

“Two weeks ago.” Claire banged the ice cube tray on the table and the cubes spilled out. “The longest two weeks in my life. To tell the truth, there've been days when I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Nights, too. Nights especially,” she added, in a lower voice.

Considering that, Ruby found a knife and began cutting the pie. “You've been staying out here all by your lonesome?”

“Well, yes and no.” Claire was putting ice cubes into two glasses. Her voice was flat, hesitant, as if she were measuring her words. “There are the Rawlingses, of course. Sam and Kitty. Mr. Hoover—he's the lawyer for the estate—hired them to look after the place. Sam does the mowing and keeps up the outside work. Kitty helps out in the house and manages the veggie garden. She keeps a few chickens, too, so if we run out of food, we can always raid the henhouse for eggs.” Claire nodded toward the flowers. “She brought me those this morning. The sweet peas are blooming all over the garden fence.”

Ruby moved her shoulder bag onto the floor and put down their plates
of pie. “I met Sam,” she remarked. “He was…” She stopped, not quite sure how to put it.
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile

“Abrupt?” Claire prompted, into her hesitation. “Impolite, maybe?”

“Try bad mannered,” Ruby said. “As in rude.”

Claire made a face. “I'm never sure whether he's doing it on purpose or whether he's so naturally tactless that it just comes out that way.” She poured the tea and put the glasses on the round oak table, and they sat down across from each other. “The place has been empty for so long, he's begun to think he owns it. I'm not comfortable with that.”

“He thought I might be with one of the oil companies,” Ruby said, picking up her fork. “If I were, I could turn the car around and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Those companies have been a serious nuisance,” Claire said ruefully. “The big guys send letters or work through the landowners' lawyers. But the little guys just show up at the front door, and they don't want to take no for an answer. Kitty had some trouble with one a few weeks ago, and it pissed Sam off. He doesn't like intruders—which is good, I guess. He's like a watchdog, a Rottweiler, maybe, or a pit bull. And judging from past behavior, it's even possible that his bite might be worse than his bark.”

“Kitty is Sam's wife?”

“Uh-huh. She's pleasant enough, but she's shy. It's hard to get more than a couple of words out of her. Sam has her pretty much under his thumb. The two of them take quite a bit of time off—a day or two a week, sometimes. If I stay, I need to find somebody else to live in the cottage and help. But then again…” Her face looked drawn and tired. “Mr. Hoover says it's not easy getting people to work out here. And if I'm serious about turning this place into a paying proposition, it's going to need a
ton
of work—plumbing, electrical work, painting. And money, of course. And I have to—”