Emily's Ghost (24 page)

Emily felt the rumble of
the
Islander's
engines beneath her, revving up for departure. Gulls squealed
overhead, reeling and diving at the fingertips of a young boy near
the rail who was holding up potato chips for them. The sun was
ready to do business with anyone who asked; several day-trippers
were racing to position themselves, as if there might not be enough
rays to go around. Ahead of them lay the sound -- blue, sparkling,
enchanting -- and beyond that, one of the jewels in New England's
crown, Martha's Vineyard.

"It's good to be out
here," Lee said in a voice that sounded utterly
relieved.

She murmured an agreeable
assent. He didn't seem to waste words when he was pleased; she
liked that, and it was only later that she realized why.

"I have a confession to
make," he said, lifting his cup from the bench and notching a
little sipping hole in the plastic cap. "I was here in time for the
seven-fifteen."

"And you didn't take it?
What were you waiting for?" she asked without thinking. "An
in-flight movie?"

He took a tentative sip of
the piping hot coffee as he watched the gulls wheel and beg.
"Nope."

Her heart poised in
anticipation, fluttering in her breast. But then she thought, no.
She would not ask, she would not ask. Let him find some other
creature to beg him for treats. She let his unspoken compliment
drop, like untouched bread. But it was hard.

It was even harder not to
look at him, not to drink in the sheer presence of him. In his
Pennzoil cap he looked downright fatherly, an all-around guy who by
now should have two or three kids. What was he waiting for? There
was no one out there who could top Nicole.
Give it up, dope!
she wanted to
cry.
Nicole is gone. Settle for someone
else! Time's awastin'!

Time was always
awasting.

"So what's the Vineyard
assignment?" he asked after a bit. "Or can't you say?"

She had been preparing for
the question since his phone call the night before; it was bound to
come. There was this vast uncharted territory between them haunted
by an impatient ghost, and Emily was only just finding her way
around in it. How could she possibly invite Lee in yet? The first
time she'd tried, on the night they made love, it ended in their
going their separate ways.

She took the plunge anyway
and said simply, "Hessiah Talbot."

"Oh. Her," Lee said with a
kind of sinking sigh. He looked away, toward the treacherous
channel with its tide-bound buoys and swirling eddies. His face
became a study in gloom.

"I'm doing a feature for
the
Journal
about
Newarth, where the murder took place. There's a delightful
librarian there who gave me an angle for the story. She says
there's a curse on the town because of it, that Newarth's decline
began when the girl was strangled."

"So the information you .
. . acquired . . . about this girl Hessiah Talbot turned out to be
true?"

"Oh, sure," Emily said
breezily. "And with the local downturn in the economy, the curse
angle fits right in."

His face began to brighten
beneath the Pennzoil cap. "In other words, this piece is
really
about the
economic decline of a small town, and the Talbot murder's just a
convenient hook to hang it on?" In other words, he was saying
between the lines, there was no Fergus.

The change in him left
Emily stunned. He looked as if a heavy weight had been rolled off
his shoulders. His face broke into a broad, captivating grin,
followed by an expression so tender, so intense that Emily would
have said just about anything to keep it there.

Which is basically what
she did. "Yes. There's nothing more to it than that," she said,
staring into her coffee. "It's a story of decline."

In that single, bald-faced
lie, Emily discovered exactly how far her feelings for Lee had
gone. Not only was she willing to take a number for him, but she
was also willing to deny the existence of the ghost she knew he'd
never be able to see. What else could she do? It was obvious that
Fergus stood between them. There were other obstacles, too --
Gloria and all the rest -- but the big one, the first one, was
Fergus. Emily was as committed to helping Fergus as ever, but she
saw no real point in saying so to Lee Alden.

There was one thing she
did want to say to him, however. "I've never said a word about your
coming to my place or about Kimberly or the séance or any of it,"
she told him, glancing around furtively for
eavesdroppers.

He took her big straw hat
from the back of her chair and placed it gently on her head. "Sun's
getting high," he explained with a tender smile. "You're talking
about the
Newsweek
bit. Don't worry about it. It comes with the territory. It's
nothing new." He laid the ribbons across her shoulders for her to
tie. "It never occurred to me to think you were behind
that."

She took up the pale green
ribbons and tied them under her chin. "Boyd Strom sounds very
serious," she said. "But why would he take
you
on? He can't have a
chance."

"You flatter me,
mademoiselle. Strom will take me on if he thinks he can win. The
man plays serious hardball; I have no doubt he'll give me a good
run for the money."

Which means one false move
from me and down you tumble,
she thought
with dismay. Her face must have showed her alarm because he smiled
and said, "Have I said that you look adorable in that
hat?"

"N-n-no," she stammered.
"I'm not the adorable type."

"Which makes you all the
more adorable. Emily, not to worry. I'll fight the good fight, and
with any luck I'll win. I'm not all that concerned," he added
seriously. "I have no real skeletons in my closet."

But I've got a real ghost
in mine.
She should run, not walk, from
this man if she really cared for him. Yet she stayed, caught in his
spell, snatching these few moments in the sun with him. They talked
of innocent things, of family and summer, and all too soon they
were rounding the sandy bluffs of West Chop, on their way into the
port of Vineyard Haven.

"Why didn't you take the
ferry directly to Oak Bluffs?" he asked as they watched the ferry
back down smoothly along the pilons.

"This one runs earlier,"
she answered, intensely aware that his arm was touching hers as
they leaned idly against the rail. "I wanted to get my interview
done in plenty of time to have supper and see the performance
tonight at the Tabernacle."

"You'll never make the
last ferry."

"I know. I thought I'd
give myself a treat and stay at a bed and breakfast somewhere on
the island," she said, holding up her canvas bag.

"But you don't know
where?" He frowned, then said, "This is crazy. I have a house with
half a dozen guest rooms, and you plan to wander around the island
like some carpetbagger. Please. Flag down a cabbie, and come to my
place. They all know where it is. I'll leave a light
burning."

"Oh, I couldn't," she
said, aghast at the thought. "You'll have a house full of family
and friends and I'm going to go tapping on strange doors and
climbing over sleeping bodies till I find an empty bed? It's an
awful intrusion."

"Actually," he said
suddenly, "Why not come to the party as well? It's an informal
affair. The kids swim and play ball and end up pitching tents on
the lawn, and none of 'em sleep in the house anyway. My mother
would love to have your company. And so, needless to say, would I.
Come." He tugged gently at the ribbon under her hat, then slid the
back of his finger along the line of her chin. "Come."

What an offer: a weekend
with the most desirable man she'd ever met, surrounded by a slew of
spoiled kids and snobby adults with everything in common except
her. Emily teetered, then tottered. "No," she said at last. "It's
very kind of you, but I think ... not."

"Don't think, Emily," he
said in a low, compelling voice. "Just come. Wherever you are,
whatever the time, just get in the cab and come."

They were in the way now
of departing passengers. Emily let herself be nudged into falling
in line, and Lee stepped in beside her. At the bottom of the
gangplank she said, "I have some things I have to do" -- she meant,
solve Hessiah Talbot's murder -- "before I can ever
come."

"Fine, do them!" he said,
brushing her cheek with a kiss. Then they parted, and Emily was
left dizzily thinking that she ought to have made herself more
clear.

****

The Oak Bluffs Home for
the Aged was a stately Queen Anne with a view across Ocean Park of
the Atlantic. Originally it had been a home for retired seamen, but
a decade ago it had gone coed. Hattie Dunbart, who was the widow of
a merchant mariner, was the first woman ever to hang her hat there.
She knew how to play pinochle, and she liked the smell of a pipe,
so the men agreed to lower the rope and let her in. After that
other women followed, and now the home sheltered seven members of
each sex, all of them connected to the sea in some way.

"Hattie's a tough little
bird," the director explained to Emily in an affectionate tone as
she led her through a series of pleasant and old-fashioned rooms on
the ground floor. "She's had a series of strokes which've left her
somewhat impaired. But if she wants to, she'll hear you. If she
feels like it, she'll answer you. And if she likes you, she'll even
tell the truth."

Emily smiled nervously as
the director walked up to a tiny woman with a wispy crown of white
hair who was seated in a wheelchair facing a spectacular
bay-windowed view of the ocean. She wore a dark blue rayon dress
with a high ruffled collar and long sleeves, and she had a yellow
afghan folded over her knees. Her hands pulled constantly at the
edges of the afghan, as if she were afraid it would slip from her
lap and leave her in perishing cold.

The director introduced
Emily to Hattie and then pointed to the porch, which was wide and
white and filled with potted red geraniums. "Would you like us to
wheel you out onto the piazza?" she asked loudly.

Hattie waved her away with
a withered hand. "Shoo, shoo! What're you thinking of? It's
colder'n a witch's tit out there."

The director smiled and
shook her finger gently at Hattie and left. Emily took a seat in a
Boston rocker whose arms had been rubbed bare of their black paint
and said, "This is a wonderful place. You're so near the
sea."

"What pony?" Hattie asked
with a blank look, picking at her yellow afghan.

"No, I said, 'You're so
near the sea.' The
sea,"
Emily repeated, gesturing toward the
ocean.

"What about the sea?"
Hattie asked at last. "It killed my husband. What do you want? I'm
tired.
Shoo."

"Oh, Mrs. Dunbart, please
don't send me away. I won't take much of your time—"

"How should I know the
time?" she snapped. "I don't have a watch."

Emily shook her head. "No,
no. I only wanted to ask you about the necklace—"

"Tom wasn't reckless!
Everyone says that, but he wasn't!"

"No, wait. Here." Emily
lifted her chin and held up the rose crystal away from her throat.
"Do you recognize this?"

Hattie squinted in Emily's
direction but said nothing. After a minute she said,
"What?"

Fearing that she'd be
tossed out soon, Emily shouted,
"Did this
belong to you?"

Hattie stared at Emily
blankly and then said weakly, "I'm cold. Get out. Shoo."

Emily could see that she
was distressing the elderly woman. It was pointless to pursue this.
She stood up with a contrite smile on her face. "I'm sorry I
troubled you," she said.

And then she noticed the
eyeglasses tethered to the side of Hattie's wheelchair. On a hunch
she unhooked them from their place and handed them to Hattie, who
put them on automatically. Emily leaned over, propping one hand on
her knee, and held up the necklace as close to Hattie as she
could.
"Was this yours?"
she asked, forming the words carefully with her
lips.

Hattie adjusted the
spectacles on her small, aquiline nose and peered closely. Then the
map of wrinkles that made up her face rearranged themselves into a
wonderful, happy grin. "My necklace!" she cried. "I thought it was
gone!"

She reached up to tweak
her hearing aid and said, "Where did you find it?"

"I bought it,"
Emily screamed, and poor Hattie clapped her hands
over her ears.

"Don't shout! I'm not
deaf!" she said, wincing.

Emily lowered her voice to
normal and explained how the necklace had ended up with
her.

"That's exactly when I was
in the hospital," Hattie said, exasperated. "My niece must have
sold it at the Penny Sale. What a scatterbrain she is! There was a
box in my closet full of things I planned to put out for the sale.
But I'm
damned
sure that wasn't in it. Well, I must buy it back. How much
did you pay?" She reached under the afghan and with shaking hands
brought out a worn leather change purse.