Читать книгу House of Strangers - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 9

PAUL’S SHOULDER ached. He drove back to his motel using only his left hand. His right arm would never be really strong again. Even with all the physical therapy and the operations he’d endured, he’d been warned the pain might never completely leave him.

The damp chill in the Delaney house wasn’t helping. He probably shouldn’t have explored the place again after Buddy left. He hadn’t uncovered anything worth noting, anyway. The dirt floor in the basement, which hadn’t been disturbed since the house was built, was as hard as concrete, and the attic seemed to hold no hidden spaces. He decided he’d explore further when he was rested.

Another night in a good bed was more necessity than indulgence.

Time enough to organize his camping equipment tomorrow. And if he hated staying at the house, he could always check back into the motel.

He shut the door of his room behind him, tossed the key on the dresser and collapsed onto the king-size bed. In his years of flying he’d spent too many nights in anonymous rooms like this. Sometimes when his wake-up call came, he’d have to check the notepad beside the telephone to remember where he was. He never thought he’d miss those days, but now if he had his right arm and shoulder back the way they’d been before the attack, he’d never complain about his crazy flight schedule again.

Not going to happen. But at least he’d managed to pass the physical for a Class III commercial pilot’s license. He could still fly his own small plane and would be flying a cropduster for the local fixed-base operation in a few weeks. So in some sense, he still had the sky. Doug Slatterly and Bill McClure would never be able to fly again. Doug still had memory lapses and tremors. Bill had lost the sight in his right eye and along with it, his depth perception.

And all because one of their colleagues had decided to crash the L-10 transport they were flying so that his family could collect double indemnity on his life insurance.

They’d all had military experience, but even so, the attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that they’d all been badly hurt before they’d fought back. It was a miracle Doug had stayed conscious, keeping the man at bay to give Paul a chance to turn the plane and keep it level.

In the end, they’d managed to disarm the man and land the plane safely with no loss of life on the ground, but at a horrific cost to their bodies. Paul smiled ruefully. The lunatic was the only one who got what he wanted. After he’d tried to escape from the plane, a police sniper had shot him, and the insurance company had been forced to pony up the double indemnity.

The three survivors—Bill, the navigator, Doug, the co-pilot, and Paul himself, pilot-in-charge—had been paid off handsomely. The company hadn’t wanted any lawsuits with the attendant publicity. They’d settled generously.

But he’d be willing to bet that both Doug and Bill would give back the six million bucks they’d each been awarded if they could still qualify for their old jobs. Paul certainly would.

The last he’d heard, Doug was planning to open a seafood restaurant in Coral Gables. He didn’t know what Bill was doing. Both their marriages had survived, although Bill and Janey had separated for a while.

Maybe Bill and Janey wouldn’t have come through if they hadn’t actually been legally married with children. Certainly Paul and Tracy hadn’t. Tracy had stuck with him in the hospital and for the first month of physical therapy after he came home, but in the end she’d broken their engagement.

He didn’t blame her. Tracy had been a flight attendant long enough to have her pick of the prime runs. She’d expected to marry a transport pilot, not a bad-tempered man with a bum arm and no idea what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. She wasn’t the one who changed. He had.

They’d taken no marriage vows, no “for better or worse.” The breakup had been nasty. They’d both said terrible things that could never be unsaid.

Tracy had mailed him an invitation to her wedding a month ago to a pilot for one of the big commercial airlines. He had sent her a very expensive silver tray and toasted her alone in his apartment with too much brandy.

He soaked for an hour in the bath, slept for another and then drove back to the house. He wanted to poke and pry further. Maybe he’d be able to thrash his way through the damp weeds and vines in the garden to the summer kitchen or the garden shack.

Mrs. Hoddle had told him that nothing remained in the house from the Delaney years. The heir had commissioned an estate agent to sell everything he and his wife didn’t want. A junk dealer had carted off what remained.

Paul parked in the broken concrete area at the back of the house. No garage, of course. That would have to be built from scratch. He climbed out and stepped into the tall grass that had once been the back lawn. He was surprised to find a herringbone pattern of bricks just visible under the weeds. Must’ve been some sort of patio. He forced his way through tangled vegetation until he found himself snared by overgrown rosebushes.

Years without pruning should have killed them, but despite the long bracts that snagged his clothing, he could see the beginning of a few green shoots. Maybe they could still be saved.

The door to the summer kitchen had a heavy, rusted padlock on it. Looking around, Paul decided he wouldn’t be able to get to the fence at the back of the property without a machete, so he gave up and went back to the house.

Imposing from the front, the house looked much more informal from the rear. He could barely make out the outline of the piano through the filthy bay windows. On his left beyond the music room, the window wall of the conservatory stretched down the entire side of the house. Judging from the layers of grime and the festoons of spiderwebs, no one had washed the outside of those windows in twenty years.

He walked up the two steps to the back door and fitted his new key into its new lock. The door silently opened on oiled hinges. Buddy’s doing, no doubt. The broad center hall ran straight through the house. Paul could see shadows of the trees in the front yard through the glass of the front door.

He turned into the kitchen.

An old butcher-block table marred by the nicks of countless knives stood in the center of the room.

He heard the slightly off-key tinkle of the piano.

The hair on his arms stood up. His first ghost?

After a moment he got himself under control and listened. Debussy, maybe, or Ravel. Familiar, although he couldn’t identify it. Something soft and sad and French.

When he’d looked through the bay window earlier, he’d seen no silhouette at the piano. There had been no other cars parked either in the driveway or out front on the street, and he’d heard none drive in.

Buddy had the only other key, but Buddy hardly seemed the type to favor Debussy or Ravel.

Paul started to call out, then stopped. He definitely did not believe in ghosts, so there must be ten human fingers on those keys. If the pianist thought he, too, was alone in the house, then hearing Paul’s voice might give him or her a heart attack. The sudden sound had definitely accelerated Paul’s pulse.

The music stopped suddenly.

Paul waited a moment, then crossed the central hall. The music room was partially open. Paul peered in.

No one was at the piano. The room was empty. So was the front parlor, which he could see through the open doors between the two rooms.

He stepped into the music room. Absolutely empty. Had he been hearing things? The piano was open. He remembered Buddy’s closing it after showing him how discolored the old ivory keys were.

He touched the bench. Still warm. To the best of his knowledge, ghosts did not have warm bottoms.

Someone was in the house. Heart attack or not, it was time to call out.

He started to open his mouth when a huge black object hurtled through the hall door and hit him full in the chest.

Paul’s feet slid out from under him, and he landed flat on his back, barely managing to keep his head from cracking against the bare floor.

He managed a couple of gasps before the black object reached out a long, maroon tongue and licked him straight across the face.

“Get off me!” Paul didn’t think attack dogs were trained to lick their quarry, so he felt relatively safe shoving this one off his chest.

“Dante!”

Footsteps pelted down the back stairs. A moment later he saw a figure silhouetted in the shadowy doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” he said. “Call off your moose.”

“Dante, get off him. Down.”

Dante gave Paul one last quick swipe with his tongue, then sank to the floor beside him and stared with beseeching eyes.

“What kind of dog is this, anyway? I’ve never seen one like it.”

“He’s a Neopolitan mastiff.”

Paul rolled to a sitting position and found himself nose to nose with the mastiff. “He makes bloodhounds look cheerful.”

“He’s really a happy dog. It’s just his woebegone expression and all those wrinkles that make him look miserable. Listen, I’m awfully sorry. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Just my dignity, Miss…uh?”

“Ann Corrigan.” She offered a hand, and when he took it with his left, she helped him back to his feet.

“Ah—you’re the Ann Buddy was talking about.”

“You have to be Mr. Bouvet. Do you need to sit down or anything?”

“Not quite that decrepit, thank you.”

“I didn’t mean…I guess you heard the piano. Buddy swore you wouldn’t be back this afternoon, so I borrowed his key to start taking pictures of the inside of the house. When I saw the piano, I couldn’t resist.”

“You play well.”

“No, I don’t.” Ann laughed. “I play one tempo—slow. And one style—easy with lots of mistakes—although I spent every Tuesday afternoon for years on that piano bench. I took lessons from Miss Addy.”

“The lady who owned the house.”

“Only for the last few years. It belonged to the Delaneys. When Mrs. Delaney died, she left it to her sister for her lifetime. Miss Addy must have taught most of the kids in the county to play the piano.”

“You sounded good.”

“I was not one of her star pupils. When I wasn’t in school I was either out with the hunt or pitching for the softball team. I hated to practice. Scales, yuck. Now I wish I’d worked harder.”

“I attempted to play the tuba in my high-school band. It was a grave error. I lasted less than six weeks. Football was easier, except that I wasn’t big enough for a college scholarship.”

Dante had not moved from his position but followed the conversation like a tennis spectator, turning his head from one to the other.

Ann lifted her hand, palm up, and Dante hauled himself to his feet and went to stand beside her. He had no tail, so his entire rear end wagged.

“Look, we don’t have to stand here in the middle of an empty room,” Ann said. “Let’s sit on the window seat in the conservatory—if you don’t mind getting dirty.”

Paul followed her through the archway at the left and into the conservatory. She perched on one of the cushions. “It’s pretty dusty.”

“I’m already dirty.” He sat far enough along the curve of the windows so that he had a good view of her. “Does Dante always greet people so enthusiastically?” he asked.

“I’m sorry about that. I spend a lot of time in empty, isolated old buildings by myself. When I’m really doing good work, I sometimes keep going all night. There are never any curtains at the windows, so it’s like I’m standing on stage under a spotlight while the rest of the world outside is in darkness. I’d feel like a sitting duck without Dante as my early-warning system and my guardian.”

On hearing his name, the dog laid his head on Ann’s lap. She scratched his small, pointed ears.

“Not much of a guardian, although he looks scary enough,” Paul said.

“He’d never bite a living soul, but just having all 180 pounds of him land on you and lick your face would scare most bad guys into cardiac arrest.”

“Almost worked with me.”

“He doesn’t usually go looking for trouble. I guess he decided that since this was an empty house, I must be working. Sometimes he’s a bear of very little brain.”

“Has he ever had to launch into action before?”

“A couple of times in D.C. he barked and may have scared off the bad guys, but not since I’ve moved back down here. I didn’t even hear you from upstairs. He decided to investigate on his own.”

“Buddy says you know this house well.”

“I ought to. Miss Addy was not only my piano teacher, she was my great-aunt.”

Paul froze. Ann Corrigan was a Delaney? “I thought her sister owned the house and that the other lady only had life tenancy.”

“Her older sister, Aunt Maribelle, was the one who married into the Delaneys and inherited the house when her husband died. But Aunt Addy lived with her forever, and Aunt Maribelle didn’t want her to have to move.”

“So Mrs. Maribelle Delaney was also your great-aunt?”

Ann nodded. “My grandmother was the youngest of the three girls.”

“Is she still—”

“Alive?” Ann grinned. “Is she ever.”

“So your father…”

“Gram is my mother’s mother.”

“So you really are a Delaney?”

“More of a kissing cousin by marriage. Practically everybody in this area is kin to everybody else.”

Paul looked at her closely for the first time, trying to discern something in her face that might show her relationship to the Delaneys.

A moment later he decided she was worth exploring for herself. She was of average height, average weight and average coloring. Her medium-brown hair was fairly long and tied back tightly by a red scarf. She had a nicely rounded body with long legs and a generous bosom.

She looked as though she laughed a lot—the sort of girl an earlier generation would have called “a good egg.”

Her face was too strong-boned for classic beauty and her mouth a bit too wide. Might be interesting to taste it.

Her eyes were her best feature. They were large, slightly tilted at the corners and the sort of gray-blue that changes color with mood or the color of the background. Although she’d long since chewed off her lipstick—if indeed she wore any—her lips were still the color of a not-quite-ripe pomegranate. Paul could see no resemblance to the Delaney in the only photo he possessed.

She was a far cry from the pencil-thin flight attendants he was used to, but judging from the muscles in her arms, she was in good shape. Probably her job required a certain amount of strength. He felt an immediate attraction.

He had certainly never expected to meet a woman like this in Rossiter.

“If you want to know the history of the house and the family,” she said, “check out the library in Somerville and the courthouse records. There’s also been a newspaper in Fayette County since before the Civil War. I’m sure they have copies at the morgue.”

He stiffened. “Why would I be that interested?”

“I just thought that since you bought—”

“Of course. Now that it’s mine, I should find out all I can about its history. I’ve never owned an old house before.”

“I can give you a list of movies to rent that will scare you even more than Buddy did,” she said. “The Money Pit comes to mind.”

“So you think I made a bad bargain?”

She put up her hands. “Oh, no! I think you made a wonderful bargain. It’s just that you’re going to have to live through three or four months of hell to get to paradise.”

“A few months seems a short time to wait for paradise.”

“You won’t think so a month from now.” She stood and Dante walked around to her left side and sat at her heel. “I’m glad to have met you. But I really do have to take some pictures before the rest of the light goes.”

“Of course.” He stood, as well. “What are you taking pictures of?”

“Details of any architectural detail that may have to be re-created, as well as the pediments and pilasters outside that we may have to rebuild or duplicate. Pictures of the scamoglio on the staircase—”

“Scamoglio?”

“It’s a fancy kind of plaster technique that looks like polished marble. You didn’t think that staircase wall was real marble, did you?”

“I assumed it was some kind of painted finish.”

Ann laughed. “Perish the thought. I’ve already taken some shots of the overmantel and the fireplaces, but I wanted to take at least a couple more rolls before the crews start cleaning up.”

“Buddy says you can salvage the mural in the dining room.”

“I’m going to give it my best shot, although it may be too fragile to leave where it is. You can always make a screen out of it.”

“You can get it off the wall?”

“We’ll see.” She stuck out her hand. “Sorry we met under these circumstances, but I’m glad at least we did meet. Next time Dante will know you’re a friend. He won’t knock you down again.”

“Great.” He stopped in the front hall. “I didn’t see a car out front. How did you come? Did Buddy drop you?”

“Oh, no, I walked. I live in the loft upstairs over the flower shop on the square.”

“I assumed the lofts were used for storage. Didn’t realize anyone lived there.”

“Actually, I have both the end lofts—the one over the real-estate office, as well. I use one for living and one for working.”

“What’s in the far building, the one with the bear?”

“That? Trey Delaney uses it as a kind of second office when he wants to get away from the farm.” She raised her eyebrows. “As well as from his wife Sue-sue and the children. Well, I’m off upstairs.”

“And I’m heading back to the motel. See you tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” She waved, picked up the digital camera that hung around her neck and trotted up the back stairs. He could hear the click of Dante’s nails on the naked risers.

He watched her rear end in the tight jeans. Nice to see a woman who actually looked womanly. The sort a man could enjoy holding in his arms.

He’d be willing to bet that even in jeans, she’d draw the eye of every man in a restaurant. There was an aura of sexuality about her, of passion just beneath the surface. He doubted she was aware of it.

He pulled himself up short. He had not come to Rossiter for female companionship, no matter how appealing. And there were excellent reasons not to become involved with any Delaney kin, even a kissing cousin. His kissing cousin actually, although he had no idea how to figure out their relationship. He had a job to do, a promise to fulfill, not only to Tante Helaine, but to his mother.

So Trey Delaney used the office with the bear outside. Paul would have to find out the story behind that bear. Might give him an excuse to start asking questions about Trey at the café. He very much wanted to meet Trey. Always a good thing to know your enemy. And they were, after all, kin.