Gallows Hill (7 page)

"That's not blood," Eric told him. "It's tomato sauce. Mrs. Zoltanne's been scalded."

"It's my own stupid fault," said Rosemary, fighting back tears. "I was taking the sauce off the stove, and I didn't use pot holders. I lost my grip, and the pot slid out of my hands."

"How bad—?"

"To me they look like second-degree burns," said Eric. "I think you'd better get her to Urgent Care."

"I'm going with you," Sarah said as Ted placed a protective arm around Rosemary and began to steer her across the kitchen toward the entrance hall.

"There's no need for that," Ted said. There's nothing you can do. You'll be much more useful if you stay here and clean up this mess."

"But Rosemary's hurt!" Sarah protested. "I want to be with her!"

"I'll be all right, honey," her mother assured her as she leaned against Ted's arm and allowed him to guide her. "Please, don't argue, just do what Ted says. And Eric, I don't know where you came from, but I'm very glad you were here."

Sarah followed them into the living room and stood at the window watching helplessly as Ted and her mother got into Ted's car and he backed it out of the driveway and turned right to head south toward town. Long after the car was out of sight, she continued to stand there, gripping the windowsill and struggling for control.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked, coming to stand beside her.

"Not really," Sarah said. "I'm not very good in emergencies."

"You did fine," Eric said.

"No, I didn't. I panicked. Poor Rosemary—it was so terrible...."

"It could have been a whole lot worse," Eric said gently. The truth is your mom got off lucky. What if all that boiling stuff had splashed up into her face?"

"How did you know what to do?"

"I'm an Eagle Scout," Eric said. "That was my dad's idea; he thought it would look good on my college application. Not that it's any of my business, but does Mr. Thompson always come charging in here like that without knocking? I mean, the guy acted almost as if he lives here."

"He does live here," Sarah said, not bothering to lie.

"I thought Kyra told me he has an apartment over on Barn Street."

"That's just to keep up appearances," Sarah said bitterly. "I can count on one hand the number of nights he's spent there. That man is a total hypocrite and he's also a control freak. He calls the tunes, and my mother and I are supposed to dance to them."

"Tell me about 'control freaks,'" Eric said shortly.

"You've had experience?"

"Like all of my life," Eric said. "My dad and Mr. Thompson came out of the same mold, except that Kyra's dad went to teachers' college and mine went to law school." He paused and then said, "You know, maybe you shouldn't get involved in the fortune-telling. It could be risky for you."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked him.

"If Mr. Thompson found out about it, there would be hell to pay, especially after Mr. Prue's reaction to your carnival booth. As scared as you already are of Mr. Thompson—"

"I'm not scared of him," Sarah interrupted defensively. "What makes you think I'm scared of him?"

"You sounded like you were. I mean, didn't you say that you and your mom do everything he tells you?"

"I'm not a bit afraid of him, I just detest him," Sarah said. "Just because Rosemary has decided to let Ted Thompson take charge of her life doesn't mean he's going to control mine. I can make my own decisions about how I earn spending money."

"Does that mean you'll do it?" Eric asked her.

"Yes, I'll do it," Sarah said. "So, tell me the details. How will we work it?"

"Well, first there's the question of finding a location," Eric said. "Where does your mom keep her mop? We can talk things over while I help you clean up the kitchen."

Kyra Thompson answered the phone on the first ring.

The voice was the one she had been hoping to hear.

"So, how did it go?" she asked eagerly.

"It couldn't have gone better," Eric told her. "Are you where you can talk?"

"I'm on the kitchen extension. Mom's in the living room watching TV, and Brian's at a friend's house. So, tell me. What happened?"

"At first I thought she was going to say no," Eric said. "Then, while I was sitting out front waiting for her to come out with my radio, her mom had an accident in the kitchen. I came to the rescue like one of those medics on television. From then on I had her eating out of my hand."

"What happened to Rosemary? Not that I care, I'm just curious."

"She took a bath in a pot of boiling spaghetti sauce."

"How bad is it?" Kyra asked. "Is she going to need skin grafts?"

"I don't know, but it's certain that she would have if I hadn't been there. Sarah freaked out, and the Zoltanne woman was just standing there cooking in the stuff. I rinsed her off and packed her with ice. Then your dad arrived and whisked her off to Urgent Care. I helped Sarah clean up the kitchen—what a job that was!—and by the time we were done, she was acting as if I was Sir Lancelot and champing at the bit to get our little business going."

"I'm surprised," Kyra said. "I really didn't think you could talk her into it."

"'O ye of little faith,' to quote from last week's sermon by our esteemed Reverend Morris. My barrister father has bestowed upon me a double-tipped tongue."

"You'd think I'd have learned that by this time," Kyra said. "Still, you never cease to amaze me. When will we hold the first session?"

"As soon as possible," Eric said. "We don't want to lose the momentum. And guess where we're going to have it? In your father's apartment!"

"You're what? Kyra exclaimed. "Now, wait a minute, Eric! That's going too far! If Dad ever found out—"

"He's not going to find out," Eric said. "According to Sarah, he spends all his time at their place. She likes the idea of putting one over on your father. She's going to sneak the apartment key off his key chain and have it duplicated. Then she'll put the original back. Hell never even miss it."

"But what if he happens to go over to the apartment while you're there? He doesn't go there often, but you can never tell."

"There'll be no chance of that if he's spending the evening with you," Eric said. "You get to pick and choose when you want to be with him, so pick the nights we're going to be using the apartment."

"It makes me nervous," Kyra said.

"It shouldn't," Eric told her. "Even if we do get caught, you won't get the blame for it. Nobody even knows you were part of the fortune-telling scheme at the carnival, and they're certainly not going to guess you're involved with this."

"Why is this so important to you?" Kyra asked him. "It's not like you need the money. Your dad gives you anything you want."

"Not this," Eric said. "Only you can give me this."

"If you get caught—"

"I'll talk my way out of it like I always do. That's half of the fun. Come on, Carrot Top, be a sweetheart. I need you for the info."

"All right," Kyra said with a sigh. "But please, be careful. Make sure everything in the apartment is put back just like it was. Don't start taking risks just to test Dad and see if you get caught."

"Would I do that?"

"Yes, you might. What I'm telling you is Don't. No matter what you say, if Sarah gets caught, she's not going to take it alone. She'll make the most of a bad thing by dragging me down with her."

She placed the receiver back on the hook and went into the living room, where her mother was seated in her father's recliner. The wineglass in her hand was filled to the brim, although Kyra recalled it as having been almost empty at the end of dinner. Obviously it had been refilled from the decanter on the coffee table.

"Was that your father?" Sheila Thompson asked immediately.

"No," Kyra told her. "It was Eric. He just wanted to chat." She paused and then, pained by the disappointment on her mother's face, offered her a consolation gift. "Guess what happened today to Rosemary Zoltanne? She dumped red-hot tomato sauce all over herself."

"Can't that woman cook?" Sheila responded contemptuously.

"Obviously not if she can't hang on to a cook pot."

"Was she injured badly?"

"It was bad enough so that Dad had to take her to Urgent Care."

"I know I should say 'Poor thing!' or something of that sort," Sheila said. "It's the Christian thing to be sorry when people get hurt, and you know how important it is to me to live by Christian values. But I'm only human. It's impossible to feel sorry for a woman who takes advantage of an argument between husband and wife to deliberately break up a happy family."

"I know," Kyra said. She sat down on the arm of the recliner and slipped her arm around her mother's shoulders. "Hang in there, Mom, we're not beaten yet. Dad will come back. He always has before."

"But this time it's different," her mother said. "This time there's that woman!"

"She won't last," Kyra said reassuringly. "This is his home, and we're his family. He's riot going to leave us."

"What does he sec in her? Is she pretty?"

"Not as pretty as you are."

"Does she have a career?"

"She did, but she doesn't now. Nobody here will hire a woman like that."

"Your father wants a homemaker. That's terribly important to him; he wants to find everything perfect when he comes home from work. He didn't object to my working part-time at the church, but when I told him I wanted to apply for that job as a legal secretary in Bridleville—"

"Rosemary is a lousy homemaker," Kyra said quickly in an effort to quell the recitation before the tears came. "She serves weird food—like artichokes."

"Do you think your father still loves me?" her mother asked in a little-girl voice filled with pleading.

"Of course," Kyra said with certainty. "If Rosemary Zoltanne hadn't jumped into the picture, he'd be here right now. This isn't going to last, Mom, I promise."

"You're such a comfort," her mother said, reaching up to cover Kyra's hand with her own. She paused and then asked, "How did Eric learn about the tomato sauce? He doesn't go over there, does he? He hasn't made a friend of that girl?"

"Of course not," Kyra said. "I guess he just heard it somewhere."

In bed that night, too stressed out to sleep, Sarah opened the library book Charlie had given her. If she hadn't known otherwise, she would have thought she was reading fiction:

In Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris, the daughter of the town minister, and her eleven-year-old cousin, Abigail, would sit in the kitchen of the Parris rectory and listen to Tituba, a slave from the Spanish West Indies, tell stories about magic. Although Tituba had converted to Christianity, she still had charms for everything. She even taught the children how to see their future husbands by breaking an egg into a glass of water and finding pictures in the swirls.

Fun was a scarce commodity in this tiny Puritan community, where lives were devoted to work and religious observance. Dancing and games were forbidden, toys were regarded as time-wasters, and little girls weren't even permitted to have dolls.

When word began to circulate about the entertainment taking place in the kitchen at the rectory, Betty and Abigail were joined by a group of older girls. The leader of this group was a twelve-year-old girl named Ann Putnam.

In Salem Village, anything involving magic was considered evil, and the older girls began to worry that they would be found out. Since Betty was the youngest and inclined to be a chatterbox, they threatened her with terrible punishment if she told what they were doing. Betty, who was an impressionable child, became too nervous to eat and started having nightmares and screaming in her sleep, Her father grew concerned and took her to a doctor, who, finding nothing physically wrong with her, determined that her problems must be caused by witchcraft.

When the older girls heard this, they became more frightened than ever that Betty would talk and that they would be blamed for her condition. Then Ann Putnam got the idea that if she claimed to be bewitched also, she might be able to escape punishment. Timing her performance to take place in the minister's presence, she screamed and hurled herself to the floor as if struck down by evil forces. The other girls caught on and entered into the drama, shouting that they saw hideous figures and were being pinched by invisible hands.

What a horrid bunch of children, Sarah thought, laying the book aside. I can't believe anyone could take all their crazy talk seriously.

But no matter how silly the story was, she was grateful to have something to think about other than the terrible scene that had occurred in her own kitchen.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eric inserted the key into the lock of the groundfloor apartment, opened the door, and groped around in the darkness in search of a switch. After a moment he found it, and the interior of the room was flooded with overhead light. He set down his backpack and Sarah's tape player and went around quickly pulling down window shades.

"We don't want the neighbors reporting that they saw lights," he said.