Читать книгу Tall, Dark And Difficult - Patricia Coughlin - Страница 8

Summer brought out the best in Wickford, Rhode Island. To be sure, other seasons held their own charms in the pretty little village. But even those die-hard locals who favored winter, when an icy wind blowing off the Atlantic kept tourists at bay, couldn’t deny that summer was somehow special.

It was more than simply a season; it was a mood, a scent, an attitude. Wild roses bloomed in the cracks in the sidewalks, time unraveled, and the heat made everything, and everyone, just a little bit looser. It began in late May, around the time the take-out window at Hanley’s Ice Cream Parlor opened for the season, and built, steadily and lazily, until peaking just before Labor Day. Then, sometime in mid-September, the inevitable combination of chilly nights and yellow school buses would snap everyone back to their senses.

Well, nearly everyone. There were rumors, legends really, passed down from one generation to the next in the beauty salon and hardware store—and if not everyone who heard believed, almost everyone wanted to.

That’s not to say that summer cast a spell over Wickford. Exactly. But facts were facts, and village history held that if an otherwise sensible person was going to swap a thriving medical practice for a fishing boat, or run off with a mysterious and much younger saxophone player, or blow the retirement account on a six-speed, dual-exhaust motorcycle, it would happen on a long, hot day in July.

Watching over all this sun-drenched madness for more years than anyone in the village had been alive, was the grand dame of Wickford, Fairfield House. She was a turn-of-the-century beauty, graceful and charming from her widow’s walk to her wraparound porch. From a distance, her pale yellow clapboards seemed to glow against the summer sky and full-leaded windows sparkled like diamonds in the sun.

Sadly, things were not quite so pretty up close. The old lady was showing her age. For two years she had stood empty, and she did not take well to neglect. That was evident in a show of peeling paint and loose balusters, and in the weeds that had taken over the once prizewinning perennial beds.

Inside wasn’t much better. A broom, a dust cloth and some elbow grease would help matters, and a decent handyman could restore the oak parquet floor, mottled with dark stains from the time the pipes froze and a radiator valve let go. But it would take something more to bring this particular house back to life.

Outside, it was eighty-five degrees in the shade, but even with the windows open the rooms held a subtle chill that had nothing to do with high ceilings or ocean breezes. It defied logic. As did the feeling of utter and absolute emptiness that clung to the house in spite of a fresh scattering of empty beer bottles and fast-food wrappers, and a trail of dirty clothes. Not even the persistent drone of a television dispelled the air of isolation. It was as if the old house refused to acknowledge the presence of the man who had arrived three days earlier, cleared himself some room in the front parlor, and hardly moved since.

He did occasionally rouse himself to use the bathroom or accept deliveries from Pizza Hut and the liquor store. And once, he made the trip from his chair all the way across the room to the old upright piano to turn a framed photograph so it faced the wall. It was a formal portrait of a handsome young Air Force officer in full dress uniform. His chest was ablaze with medals and his deep blue gaze reflected the unwavering, some might say reckless, brand of self-assurance that was a definite asset in his chosen line of work. Not every man is willing to risk his life in the cockpit of an experimental fighter jet.

It might be his clothes, or the look in his eyes, but a casual observer would never discern that the man in the picture and the man in the parlor were one and the same.

The kindest way to put it would be to say that Major Hollis “Griff” Griffin was out of uniform. Way out. Instead of starched linen and polished brass, he was wearing old jeans and an even older T-shirt with faded traces of a tequila logo. He was barefoot and unshaven, and unless someone were handing out medals for bad attitude, he wouldn’t be adding to his collection anytime soon. All in all, he looked pretty much like what he was; a man who’d been to hell and back and didn’t give a damn about anything. Or anyone.

Least of all himself.

If any of his old friends had happened to walk in and see him at that moment, they would have wasted no time informing the major that what he needed more than the beer in his hand was a haircut and a kick in the butt. However, Griff wasn’t expecting company, and if any did show up, he wouldn’t let them in. His old friends, like his old life, were thousands of miles away.

From his slouched position in the rocking chair he aimed the remote control, and through a miracle of modern ingenuity froze the image of his late great-aunt Devora on the screen of the massive, state-of-the-art projection television that was the only visible remnant of his home in California. Former home, Griff reminded himself, for much the same reason some people can’t resist poking at a sore tooth. The hillside condo, located precisely far enough from the airfield for him to drink a medium coffee on his way to work each morning, was gone now, along with everything else that meant anything to him.

Everything but the TV, that is. A man—even a useless, washed-up, broken-down man—had to draw the line somewhere. And so the television—a sleek monument to technology, surrounded by a century’s worth of…stuff. And as hopelessly out of place in this godforsaken mausoleum Devora had called home as he was.

“Don’t let it get to you, pal,” he advised the television, swigging beer as he gazed around the room full of ornate furniture, cluttered tabletops, and overflowing curio cabinets. “Just as soon as we unload all this crap, we’ll be moving on.”

He’d loved his aunt as much as he’d ever loved anyone, but ever since he’d set foot in this place he’d felt trapped. Which made sense, he reflected without a flicker of amusement. He was trapped, and he had sly old Devora to thank.

His gaze wandered from the shelves displaying her collection of egg cups to the tall mahogany breakfront fairly bulging with her wedding china, and her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s. He’d never bothered to look, but he’d bet there was a set of stone-age bowls with the Fairfield crest tucked away in there somewhere.

His aunt Devora, he had long since concluded, had been certifiable. Sweet, in her own fussy way, but a first-class nutcase nonetheless. What else could account for the fact that she had obviously never, in all her eighty-six years on earth, thrown away so much as a piece of thread or scrap of aluminum foil?

He knew that for a fact, because all of it, nearly a century’s worth of string and foil, was crammed into kitchen drawers and wicker baskets and every other nook and cranny in the place. And, just for the record, this three-story, fourteen-room dinosaur had a lot of nooks and crannies.

New England’s answer to the catacombs, he thought, mystified that he, who felt as free as the wind in the smallest airplane cockpit, felt so caged in this house. It hadn’t always been that way, he mused, recalling a string of long-ago summers, summers he used to wish would never end. Once it had sunk into his eight-year-old head that Devora wasn’t nearly as forbidding as she first appeared, they had gotten along just fine. She had taught him to dig for clams and catch fireflies and make ice cream. And on rainy afternoons she turned him loose in her trunk-filled attic, where he would try on several wars’ worth of old military uniforms that Devora had saved along with everything else, and pretend he was—

Griff abruptly halted the thought. It, like so many others, led to that large chunk of memory he had shut down and marked permanently off-limits.

Frowning, he returned his attention to the present and his aunt’s larger-than-life smile on the screen before him. He still considered it the height of irony that a woman so firmly ensconced in a bygone era that she insisted upon hand-embroidered linen napkins and hand-cranked ice cream, had seen fit to videotape her last will and testament.

He had first viewed the tape in her attorney’s office nearly two years ago and had promptly dismissed it with an amused laugh. Good old Aunt Devora, he’d thought, eccentric right to the end. He’d been riding high two years ago and had neither the time nor the inclination to think about his inheritance and the bizarre strings attached.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Jaw rigid, eyes narrowed, he jabbed the play button to hear it one more time.

“And so, my dear Hollis,” said Aunt Devora, “there you have it. My final request. I am certain you will not fail me, dear boy.”

“Perish the thought,” he muttered as the tape faded to black. God forbid he fail at the senseless, totally absurd, utterly Devora task that she had set for him. It was still hard for him to believe it was even legal, but all five attorneys he’d consulted had assured him it was.

With the exception of modest bequests to her church and several friends, Devora had left her entire estate to him, with a single caveat. Among the many useless things she’d collected during her lifetime, she most prized the glass birds displayed in a locked curio cabinet in the parlor. Her will explained that it had been her intent to complete the collection and donate it to the state Audubon Society. And now her wish was for him to do it on her behalf.

Strike that. Wish was not exactly accurate. It was more like a command, quite literally from on high. And until he accomplished the mission, he was not permitted to sell the house or anything in it.

For a long time after he’d been informed of the conditions, he’d simply put the matter from his mind and hoped that a hurricane swept the place out to sea before he was forced to deal with it. He might have felt differently if he had needed the money, but he hadn’t. One thing you could say was that Uncle Sam took care of his own. As long as Griff didn’t develop a taste for high-stakes gambling or designer suits, he’d get by just fine. Not that it could hurt to have a nice chunk set aside for security, he thought, his mood turning grimly philosophical. After all, you never knew when life might decide to drop yet another grenade in your lap.

Twists of fate aside, in the end his decision to sell was practical rather than mercenary. As the attorney for Devora’s estate had repeatedly pointed out, any vacant property was a liability. An older house of this size, on the waterfront, in an area swarming with kids and tourists, was a lawsuit waiting to happen. And that was a hassle he didn’t need.

Selling was the only logical option, he told himself, doing his best to ignore the hot, guilty feeling that kicked up whenever he thought of Devora’s reaction to strangers living in her beloved “cottage.” Fairfield House had been built by her grandfather, and she had been batty about the place, referring to it as if it were a member of the family. A living, breathing member.

If ignoring the guilt didn’t work, he would remind himself just how wily and determined his aunt could be, and how in all likelihood this whole final request business was nothing but a clever posthumous scam to trap him here forever. That thought never failed to snap him back to his senses.

His decision was made. The house had to go. It was just a question of how quickly he could unload it.

Griff reached for his beer, realized he’d finished it, and pondered whether it was worth the effort of hauling himself to the kitchen for another.

Damn Devora, he thought. As if his life wasn’t complicated enough these days without this stupid wild-goose chase of hers hanging over his head. He didn’t even know where to begin, and she sure hadn’t left any clues. At least, not any clues worth a damn. What she’d left was a name: Rose Davenport. Apparently some old friend of hers who might be able to help him. That’s assuming the woman was still alive, he thought irritably.

He was fully prepared to loathe Miss Rose Davenport on sight. Her name said it all. Rose. What kind of person was named Rose? Griff pictured prissy white gloves and a high lace collar cinched with a hideous brooch like the ones arranged in velvet-lined boxes on Devora’s dressing table. It had been one thing to humor Devora. She was blood. And she had given him something solid to hold on to when he needed it badly. However, just the thought of having to sip tea and make conversation with some other eccentric old lady threatened to send him into an even blacker mood than he was already in.

Nonetheless, first thing in the morning, that was what he was going to do. He had no choice. He would visit the old biddy and find out what she knew. And he would be polite. But he’d be damned if he would shave for the occasion. Or dress up. And he definitely would not sip tea out of some stupid cup with a handle too small for his fingers. Not unless it was absolutely the only way to get her to talk.

Suddenly another beer seemed well worth the trouble of maneuvering to his feet. Griff muttered under his breath as he did so. “Brace yourself, Miss Rose Davenport. I’ve got a hunch you aren’t going to like me any better than I’m going to like you.”

Rose secured the last of the dried flowers in place and stepped back to view her creation from a better perspective.

She stood with hands on slim hips, head tilted so that her hair tumbled over one bare shoulder. It was hair the color of honey and old gold, thick, and just wavy enough to be a challenge. To gain an edge, and save some time on humid summer mornings, she opted for long layers in back and slightly shorter ones in front and then hoped for the best. It was not the sleek, retro look of the moment, but it had been a while since Rose worried about fashion trends. The casual cut suited both her heart-shaped face and her approach to beauty rituals, which amounted to doing as little as possible.

She would rather fuss with flowers than her hair any day, and as she ran a discerning eye over the nine-foot length of garland on her worktable, she was pleased to see she had achieved exactly what her artist’s soul had envisioned; a delicate watercolor blend of the hydrangeas’ faded blue and lavender tones, enhanced, but never overpowered, by the deeper violet of the imported, twelve-dollars-and-fifty-cents-a-yard French silk ribbon.

“Magnificent,” she pronounced, kissing her fingertips to the air.

But then, she had known it would be from the moment she dived into the Dumpster behind the Wickford Country Club to retrieve the discarded hydrangeas. Her life was nothing if not proof positive of one of the most elemental laws of nature. Human nature, anyway. Namely, that one man’s, or woman’s, trash is another’s treasure. The jettisoned floral arrangements were simply the latest in the long line of rescued castoffs from which she made her living. And a comfortable living at that, she thought, gazing with satisfaction around the five-year-old shop that had been a thirtieth birthday present to herself, and which she had appropriately christened Second Hand Rose.

She loved her work, and even as she’d climbed from the Dumpster and loaded the hydrangeas into the back of her pickup she had been tingling with anticipation, her thoughts spinning with possibilities. Of course, nothing, especially art, is ever really free. After hauling the flowers home, she spent hours cleaning globs of gravy off the petals with Q-Tips and trimming them with manicure scissors. Then for weeks she’d sidestepped through her small cottage, weaving a path around the bunches of fragile blooms hanging everywhere to dry. It was all worth it however, for this one blissful moment of creative triumph.

Perhaps, she mused, the swag itself was not quite worth the astronomical price tag she was affixing to it, but then, that was the point. She regularly overpriced items she couldn’t bear to part with right away. Eventually, when she was ready to let go, the piece would be given a steep mark-down and find a new home with some lucky customer who appreciated both beauty and a great bargain. Everyone came out a winner, and in Rose’s mulishly optimistic view of things, that’s the way the whole world ought to work.

All that remained now was to hang the garland in a carelessly romantic swoop above the wide arch separating the two rooms of her shop. No easy feat, considering her aversion to heights.

Luckily, she had one thing going for her that other altophobics might not; an uncompromising case of LETCS. That was her own acronym for Little Engine That Could Syndrome. Given the right motivation, there was nothing she could not accomplish if she put her mind to it, or so she told herself on a daily basis. So far, it was working pretty well, and as she went to fetch the stepladder, a determined refrain of “I think I can, I think I can” was already organizing itself inside her head.

The sound of the bell over the entrance put her plan on hold, drawing her to the front of the shop, as a tall man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt entered. Rose didn’t recognize him, but she sure recognized the breed, and for no better reason than gut instinct, her stomach muscles knotted.

Bright August sunlight pouring through the shop’s lace-clad front windows illuminated the man’s many defects, and Rose wasted no time taking a complete inventory. His posture was too straight, his shoulders too broad, and his jaw too square. His entire facial structure had the sort of raw, chiseled quality that, when combined with leather and horse-flesh, had been selling cigarettes for generations. Every sharp angle and crease made it plain that the man was a force to be reckoned with, and he damn well knew it. Even the dark stubble on his chin was too blatantly, alarmingly masculine for her liking.

As a rule, Rose wasn’t given to snap judgments, or forming impressions based on appearance alone. But there were always exceptions. One look was enough to convince her that the man before her was historically and irreparably flawed, descended from generations of those similarly afflicted, born of a renegade breed. A modern link in a long and all-too-resilient chain of men who conquered nations and broke hearts with equal aplomb.

A winner. A taker. A user.