Emily's Ghost (51 page)

Meg opened her mouth to
say something, and then stopped. She turned to Wyler with a grim
look. Apparently she thought it was all
his
fault. "If you could give us
half an hour," she said stiffly.

Wyler looked at Allegra
for
her
reaction.
She was beaming. He took that to mean he had a room
...
her room
...
some
room. "Thanks," he said, sweeping both sisters up
in the same grateful glance. "I'll keep out of everyone's
way."

Flushed with victory,
Allie turned suddenly shy and dropped her look from his. "It will
be our pleasure," she said in a devastatingly old-fashioned way.
She slipped her arm around her older sister and squeezed her
affectionately as they walked toward their house, leaving the
detective feeling like a loose ball that had been fumbled,
recovered, and run into the end zone for a touchdown.

He pivoted awkwardly on
his cane and began heading back to the Elm Tree Inn with Julia
Talmadge.

"There. You see? All's
well that ends well, Mr. Wyler."

Wyler murmured something
polite in agreement.

In the meantime he was
thinking that he'd never
seen anyone so
beautiful in his life. Allegra Atwells was drop-dead, knock-down,
stop-traffic gorgeous.

Her face was so
disturbingly beautiful that he'd scarcely paid attention to her
body. Her body, he remembered only vaguely
—
that it was tall and sexy and that
she carried herself like a queen.

Too bad she was a spoiled
brat.

"How did you hurt your
leg, Mr. Wyler?" asked Julia Talmadge without a trace of nosiness
in her voice. She might have been asking him how he took his
morning coffee.

"Gunshot," he said curtly,
hoping by his tone to nip further inquiries in the bud.

"Oh, yes; a hunting
accident. We see a fair amount of that up here," she said
pleasantly. Obviously she made no connection between him and the
old
Newsweek
article. If only Allie Atwells were so dense.

****

"Do you remember Orel
Tremblay, Allie?"

Meg, back from the Shop ‘n
Save, was scrubbing a guest bath with Ajax while her sister was
changing bedding in room
5
across the hall. Meg's voice, cheerfully puzzled,
rang out above the flush of the toilet. "Remember? The old recluse
in the little cottage up the hill behind Pete's Bike Rentals? We
used to see him grocery shopping sometimes. He always wore that
red-and-black-checked deerstalker's hat, even in
summer."

"I guess," her sister
answered vaguely. "What about him?"

Meg came out of the bath
with an armload of used towels. "He wrote me the strangest
letter.

Here. Read it.
"
She turned and cocked
one hip so that Allie could lift the envelope that jutted from the
pocket of her khakis.

Allie looked at the
address, written in a shaky hand, and extracted the letter. Aloud
she read,

Dear Mrs.
Hazard,

It's real urgent I see you
right away. Wednesday would be good but not before eleven nor after
six. You could say it's a matter of life and death. The nurse will
let you in. Please make the time. I used to hear you were an
upright woman.

Yours,

Orel V.
Tremblay

"For goodness' sake,"
Allie said, frowning. "Are you going?"

Meg dumped the linen into
a plastic hamper and shrugged. "He claims it's a matter of life and
death," she said ironically. "Do I have a choice?"

At that moment Tom Wyler
showed up in the doorway with a hopeful look on his face. Both
sisters greeted him in the same breath, one with less enthusiasm
than the other.

"I hope I'm not too
early," he said, glancing around the still unmade room. Your
handyman sent me up here."

"That was our brother
Lloyd.
Your
room
—
my
room, that is
—
is all set," Allie said warmly. "It's upstairs and to your
left. Come on. I'll help you with your bags."

"Hold on, I hear Terry,"
said Meg, sticking her head out the hall and flagging down an
eleven year-old boy in full trot. She steered him into the room.
"Take Mr. Wyler's things into Allie's room, will you,
honey?"

The boy, dressed in torn
jeans and Keds, fastened two piercing blue eyes on Wyler, looked
him up and looked him down, and said, "Why? You sleepin' with my
aunt Allie, mister?"

Everyone rushed to say no
at the same time. The boy gave an indifferent shrug and ran
downstairs for Wyler's bag.

"They grow up so fast
nowadays," Meg said wryly to the detective.

"I know; I have one of my
own," Wyler remarked in the same wry tone. He began the painful
journey up one more flight.

Allie fell back on the
half-made bed and threw her arms out wide. "
Married!"
she wailed. "How
could
he?"

"For Pete's sake, Allie,"
her sister said. "What's the big deal? You've just met the
man."

Allie rolled her head
toward her sister. "So? Can't I be attracted to him?"

"You're attracted to him
because he's hurt," Meg said flatly. "He can't chase after you the
way the rest of them do — not yet, anyway."

"Not true. I'm attracted
to him because of the look in his eyes, so sad and tired and fed up
with the world. And because — don't you laugh — because he was on
the cover of
Newsweek
. I mean, don't you think that's fate? What are the odds that
a four-year-old magazine would be lying around in my room with him
on the cover?"

"What are the odds that
you've actually read the article inside?" Meg said, grabbing her
sister by the ankle and half puffing her off the bed.

"I scanned it. There's not
much about him; just an angry quote of his about children doing
violence to children. Don't you think he's
good-looking?"

Meg scowled at a new water
ring on the mahogany dresser. "Yeah, I guess," she said, distressed
by the ugly stain.

"I'll just go see if he
needs anything," Allie said, bounding up from the bed.

Meg held on to her
sister's shirt. "Not until you're done here. Why do you always make
me play the evil stepsister?"

"Because," said Allie,
wriggling out of her grasp with a grin, "you were born to the
role."