Blood Kin (5 page)

“And where does he live—this Benjamin Ridgely?”

The homely face crinkled into a mischievous grin. “Somewhere between heaven and hell, I suppose. Benjamin died of the cholera at Fort Delaware during
the War Between the States. His body was laid in a common pit. Neither his mother nor his intended ever saw him again—not alive, anyway. But some say he comes to this house still, whistling for his sweetheart to come out and walk with him, like he did before he got caught up in the foolishness and marched away to fight for Robert E. Lee.”

Bailey pushed back her coffee cup. “It's a good story, Emma, but I don't believe a word of it. I told you, I don't believe in ghosts. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll walk back to Mr. McCready's and see if—”

“He's still not here. Somebody would have come by to let you know. It's common knowledge that you're waiting to meet with him.”

“All the same, I'll go into the village. I still haven't been able to call my friend. Maybe I can get a signal on my cell from the dock area.”

“Suit yourself.” Emma broke open a blueberry muffin and spread butter on it. “My phone's not working yet either. It'll come back sooner or later. I've known it to be out for a week or more.”

“And nobody complains to the phone company?”

“Oh, lots complain, but nothing comes of it. Change doesn't come easy out here. If your call's important, I can round up Creed to take you back to Crisfield.”

“No, no, that won't be necessary. I was just touching base with a friend—actually my ex-husband—to let him know that I'm all right.”

Emma arched a thick eyebrow disbelievingly. “You're divorced and still friends?”

“Best friends, actually. I suppose I'll always love the bastard.” She shrugged. “The thing is, I'm not ‘in love' with him anymore. No dramatic tale of woe. My mother was sick for years and died halfway through
my senior year of college. My father mourned her two full months before he remarried. He moved her best friend's daughter and her kids into our house and turned my bedroom into a playroom. My solution was to elope with Peter Pan during winter break.”

“Peter? I thought you said his name was—”

“Elliott. Ainsley Elliott the third. He's a sweet guy. You'd like him. Everybody does.” She stood up and began to clear away her unfinished plate. “The problem was that eventually I grew up and he never did.”

By midafternoon, as she paced Forest McCready's porch for close to an hour without any sign of him, Bailey's last shred of faith in the attorney faded away. Thoroughly disgusted and unwilling to sit and wait another day without results, she decided to inspect her great-aunt's property on her own. Leaving McCready's home and walking back to Emma's once more, she found her hostess coming from her shedding house with several soft-shell crabs in a wicker basket.

“Mr. McCready still didn't show up. I've had it with him,” Bailey said. “Could you give me directions to Elizabeth's place?”

“I don't know.” Emma set her basket on the sand. “It's a ways out of town. You could get lost. There aren't any signs, and all the dirt roads tend to look pretty much alike. If you got turned around in the marsh, you could fall into a sinkhole. It's not quicksand, but just as dangerous. I've known of farmers losing hogs, even cows and horses.”

“I'm not going to wander off into any marsh. I just want to look at Elizabeth Somers's property.”

“Elizabeth
Tawes
Somers,” Emma corrected. “Elizabeth was widowed at eighteen, six months after she
was married, hardly long enough for the Somers name to matter. Elizabeth was a Tawes, no matter what she went by.” She frowned. “The farm's a long walk. It's going to be a hot one.”

“I'll take the bike.”

“Don't suppose it would do any harm for you to take a look-see. I can draw you a map . . . if you're certain—”

“I'm certain,” Bailey insisted. “And if Mr. McCready shows up, he can damn well wait for me for a change.”

Half an hour's ride by bike through farm fields and old timber forests brought Bailey to a narrow oyster-shell lane lined with cedar trees. She'd seen only one other person since she'd left the outskirts of Tawes, a farmer repairing an old-fashioned split-rail fence. The man had been on the far side of a meadow, but she'd waved. It hadn't surprised her when he ignored her gesture. So much for country hospitality.

Pleased that she'd been able to find the property, she turned onto the lane. The shade was cool after the bright sunshine, but riding on the packed oyster-shell surface was easier. The driveway was longer than she'd expected, and she wondered if she'd misunderstood Emma's directions.

“Follow the lane. You can't miss the brick house,” Emma had assured her. “If you pass it, you'll ride smack into the Chesapeake.”

Bailey knew she was close to the water, because she could hear the shrill cries of gulls. And only a few minutes ago a big black-and-white bird that she was certain was an osprey had flown over the road with a fish in its beak. She could smell the bay. Was it possible that Elizabeth had left her waterfront property? That
seemed too good to be true. No matter what the house looked like, if the lot had a view of the water, it must be worth something.

The crushed oystershells crunched under her bike tires, and birds called and flitted from the trees on either side of the lane. The path curved and ran downhill. This was turning out to be a real adventure, but where was the house? Had she missed it in the trees?

Abruptly, the cedar tunnel opened into a meadow of yellow-and-brown daisies. The lane continued on past a freshwater pond, through an old apple orchard, and alongside a pasture where two horses grazed. One of them, a long-legged chestnut with a white blaze on its face, trotted to the fence and whinnied a greeting. The other horse, silky-maned and black, raised its head and watched her with great, liquid eyes. Bailey was tempted to try to pet the chestnut, but when she approached the railing, the animal snorted, twitched its ears, and backed away.

“You're no different from anyone else on this—” She broke off as she caught sight of the blue-green bay stretching as far as she could see at the bottom of the hill. “Oh,” she exclaimed. Laying the bike beside the drive, she hurried on past a high boxwood hedge and stopped short. Her breath caught in her throat.

The lane turned in toward a sprawling eighteenth-century brick house. Bailey's heart began to race. “No,” she muttered. “It can't be. . . .” She looked around, but there was no other structure that could have been a house. There was a dormered stable with a sharply peaked roof, several old brick outbuildings, gardens, and newer farm buildings, but not a single cottage. A sweeping lawn in need of mowing ran down to a sparkling stretch of pristine sand beach. Below and to
the right of the house, a creek opened into the bay, and several hundred feet from its mouth a solid wooden dock extended into the wide waterway.

“It's not possible. All this couldn't be mine.” Mouth dry, Bailey approached the back of the house, where a frame addition led to a wide porch and a covered well. The house seemed quiet, deserted. A birdbath was empty; grass grew around the back step and between the bricks in the curving walk.

Nervously, she crossed the porch to a Dutch door and knocked.

No one answered. Bailey listened. Nothing. On a whim she tried the doorknob, and it turned in her hand. She pushed open the door. “Hello!” she called. “Hello! Is anyone here?” The only answer was the buzz of a bee from the yard behind her.

She took a deep breath and stepped into a kitchen. The air was stale and slightly musty. “Hello?”

Had she lost her mind? Two days in Sleepy Hollow and she—a Girl Scout who'd won three honor badges in two years—had become a criminal, breaking into strangers' houses. She'd end up shot or locked up, and she'd have to call Elliott to come and bail her out. But with her luck, even the phone at the jail wouldn't work, and she'd end up planting corn on a chain gang.

Then she remembered that there were no police on Tawes, and she moved into the center of the room. The shadowy kitchen was large, a comfortable blend of modern appliances and lovely colonial furnishings. A wide brick fireplace, large enough to roast a whole pig, dominated one end, a handcrafted cupboard the other. There was a plank table, backless benches, and a dry sink under double windows with checked yellow curtains. A thin layer of dust coated the table and the
maple cupboard with the lovely set of blue-and-white dishes, a piece that appeared to be as old and well preserved as the house.

She ventured up a step and through an open doorway into what was obviously a dining room. The table and chairs in there were cherry, Queen Anne, and either genuine antiques or the finest replicas Bailey had ever seen. In the corner stood a tall case clock in maple, its hands stopped at ten o'clock, the pendulum still. The initials J.T. and the date 1784 were carved into a decorative panel near the base. Bailey gazed at an oil painting of a mischievous young girl wearing a robin's-egg-blue antebellum dress and broad-brimmed hat, and holding a white kitten. She was studying the portrait for the artist's signature when she heard a door open and footsteps directly overhead.

She froze, uncertain as to what to do. Through another doorway she could see a wide hall and a staircase. The footsteps became louder. It wasn't her imagination. Someone else was in the house.

Panic made her knees weak. She wanted to run back into the kitchen and out the door, but if she did, whoever it was would take her for a thief or . . . After all, if she had inherited this property, it was legally hers, wasn't it?

You idiot
, she thought.
What if it's a burglar?
She hadn't seen another soul for miles, so she could hardly scream for help. Deciding that she'd been reading too many suspense novels, she drew herself up to her full five feet, one inch and called out, “Who's there?”

“Bailey?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. Wasn't there anyone on this godforsaken island who didn't know who she was? Before she could think of what to say next, a
middle-aged man with a weathered face half-hidden by a baseball cap appeared in the hallway.

“Mr. McCready?”

“Do I look like Forest McCready? What are you doing here by yourself? It's not safe.”

“Is this or is it not Elizabeth Somers's house?”

“It is.”

“Well, I've been told that she left it to me in her will. So I'm not a trespasser.”

“Didn't say you were, girl. What I said was that you're in danger here. You never should have set foot on Tawes.”

Bailey stepped back. “You haven't told me who you are and what you're doing in Elizabeth's—”

“She was my sister. I'm looking for something that belongs to me.”

“I think that you should take that up with Attorney—” She broke off in midsentence as the sound of a gasoline engine roared outside. She went to the nearest window, parted a curtain, and looked out as a man halted a four-wheeler in the side yard. “It's Daniel Catlin from . . .” She trailed off as she realized that the stranger was no longer there.

“Bailey?” Daniel shouted.

“Here!” She hurried out the way she'd come, taking care to close the kitchen door tightly behind her.

He met her halfway around the house. “I found your bike back in the lane, but I didn't see—”

“I was inside.” She drew in a quick breath.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. It's just that . . . there was someone else in the house.” She could feel a blush rising to her cheeks. “The back door was open, and I wanted to see . . .” She shrugged. “I know I shouldn't have, but I went in. I was
looking around when I heard . . . There was an older man upstairs. He claimed to be Elizabeth's brother and . . .”

Daniel's eyes looked worried. “Will Tawes. Did he threaten you?”

“Not exactly. He did tell me that I shouldn't be here . . . on the island—that it wasn't safe.”

“Wait here. I'll go in and take a look around.”

“There's no need to make a fuss. If he really is who he says he is, my great-aunt's brother, then he probably has as much right to be in the house as I do. Maybe more, since nothing is official yet.”

Daniel had already started up the porch steps. “Stay out here.”

She followed him. “Is he dangerous?”

“Most people think so. Elizabeth did. She hadn't spoken to him in over thirty years.”

“But if he's dangerous, aren't you—”

“Just wait here.”

Uncertainly, she retreated to the edge of the oyster-shell lane and watched the house for any sign of movement. Minutes passed, and she'd almost decided to go in and look for Daniel when she heard the back door open and the soft tread of his athletic shoes on the porch.

“There's nobody in there now,” he said. “I went all the way up to the attic. The door was latched from the outside, so he couldn't be up there. Chances are he slipped out through a side door or through the cellar.”

“But I didn't see him come out.”

“Lots of Indian blood in the Tawes family, and old Will is as quiet as any Iroquois when he wants to be. He comes and goes on this part of the island without anyone catching sight of him for months at a time.”

“Is he mentally unbalanced?”

Daniel laughed. “No more than any of us. No, Will is just ornery. Some say downright mean. He's tough as smoked eel and twice as slippery.”

“You said that he and Elizabeth—”

“Bad blood between them. Real bad. People on Tawes tend to see the world as black-and-white, no gray to it when it comes to the codes they live by. Elizabeth thought that her brother did something so unforgivable that she never could get past it.”

“Too bad. But why would he take such a dislike to me when he's never met me before today? He could be the only living relative I have. He could fill in a lot of blanks about my birth family . . . about my mother.” She hesitated. “Is it the property? Does he resent me because she left—”