Seaspun Magic (20 page)

"Don't you? But, Arianne, a helpmate—"

"I don't need one. I'm efficient enough on my own! I ran this household for two years totally straight! I mean, not using my—my sight."

"A companion—"

"I have friends!"

"A lover—" He stepped closer.

"How dare you lecture me about marriage! You can't handle it, so why foist it on me? What do you want, if it's not a good time? It's very easy for you to be a romantic and design a happy ending for me, as long as you don't figure in it. What are you warning me about Larry for. Are you any better? He can't, but you can? What kind of principles are those? Oh, why did you have to come back?"

Just as he reached out for her she cried, "Don't you touch me!" and flew from the room. She went up the stairs before he could catch her and closed her bedroom door on his entreaties to come out, to at least finish their argument.

All Arianne's smiles and wiles had come to this. An argument. She could have burst into frustrated tears. She wanted him so badly she was going mad with suppressed desire, but tonight, with his damned lecturing over Larry, he had made her feel cheap. She wanted to love him, and he had degraded their relationship by implying he wanted nothing more than "a good time." She hated him for that. As if she were a dizzy dumbo who hopped in and out of bed, having good times with everyone who happened along!

She did want to continue the argument; she wanted to yell and scream at him and slam her door just once. But of course with Rae just across the hall, she had to curb her seething emotions and try to fall asleep, instead.

***

Arianne was very short with Leo the next morning. She treated him coldly and formally, just like the guest he was. Actually, she leaned toward the unwelcome-guest treatment, but she didn't banish him to the dining room.

For his part, he was still preoccupied, but now he was troubled, too. Abstractedly his eyes followed her, but he was careful not to touch her. Arianne had the uncomfortable feeling she remained a gigantic problem to him, whether she was in his arms or not. And that was curious. She figured their argument should have released him from any feelings of responsibility or guilt that might be lingering from their last liaison. An argument always served as a good excuse to end things....

Dammit, why did he have to feel guilty about their lovemaking! She certainly didn't, and it angered her that he did. Then, maybe he wasn't feeling guilty. But what else could be bothering him? Why else would he look upon her as such a problem?

He wasn't going to be home for supper that night, he told her on his way out the door right after breakfast. She felt hurt, even though she knew it was stupid to react this way.

She supposed, for all her bravado, that in her heart of hearts she wanted a happy reconciliation and a passionate avowal he couldn't live without her. Watching him walk away through the misty morning light made her heart ache. Surely sometime in the midst of all her shenanigans and plotting, surely she hadn't fallen in love with him?

She watched him until he disappeared through the blackberry briars. Heavens, he spent an incredible amount of time at that old fort. Did a business deal really take this long to accomplish? In all the time he spent with her he hadn't taken one day off... at least as far as she knew he hadn't. Of course, he might be walking the beach right now—

Arianne whiled away the lonely Sunday hours with a myriad of little chores and playing with Rae. Together they made gingerbread cookies to hang on the Christmas tree, although she hadn't bought one yet. Jill hadn't been popping over the way she used to, and Arianne, for some unidentifiable reason, didn't feel like visiting her, either. She called her mother to catch up on the news in town and that was her only contact with the outside world for the day. Besides, she was immured in her house while the Pacific fog bank turned everything beyond the windows white.

Twilight came early. For a short time the fog lifted a little and she could see the naval fort through the misty blue gloom. More than one house was alight down there, and as she watched, several trucks, jeeps and cars came and went. It was an island of activity in a world where nothing moved. Something was certainly going on down there—

She fed Rae his supper and then, after a spell at the building blocks, sadly missing their third playmate, she put him to bed, reading him his usual bedtime story. Tonight it was "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." She thought it particularly apt, considering the mysterious foggy night.

At the point in the story where the brooms come alive Rae fell asleep. She tucked him and his green crocodile in, put out the dim night lamp and went out into the hall. Across the landing, Leo's bedroom door was shut.

As if in a trance, Arianne went to the hall closet to get her flashlight—to be sure, Leo had replaced it—and then she walked toward his closed door. She put her hand on the knob and turned, and when it opened, walked right in. One suitcase was under his bed; the other, on a chair beside the table. Taking a mental picture of the exact arrangement of things so that she could accurately put them back, she started a systematic search.

Arianne didn't even know what it was she was searching for, but something quite strange was going on... had been going on right under her nose, and she meant to find out what it was. Leo wouldn't tell, so she had to try to ferret out the truth using other tactics. She felt compelled to do so.

Arianne had never searched through anyone else's things before, not in this way, and it was surprising how frightening the seemingly simple task was. The darkness she had to work in made it worse. The flashlight flicking here and there lent her deed such sinister connotations. She had the creepy notion he would surprise her at it, and she would die if he caught her snooping! And the room was filled with his presence, the air full of memories of that one night shared in his bed. Her fingers were trembling as she opened the top drawer of the bureau.

Underwear, socks, nothing unusual. She went through all the drawers to find nothing unusual. She checked the clothes hanging in the old oak wardrobe, and her hands lingered on the softness of a beautiful salmon-hued cashmere sweater. No lumberjacks of her acquaintance wore pink cashmere sweaters. Leo might be fooling some of the natives, but he certainly wasn't fooling her in his plaid shirt and red suspenders!

And only a certain kind of man could wear a pink sweater like that and get away with it. He had to be extra tough, as Leo was, so as not to appear effeminate. With his broken nose and sweet manners, Leo was an intriguing contradiction, streetwise and yet ever so polished.

However, the beautiful sweater was not the sort of thing she was looking for. Every creak in the old house had her freezing. Every slight whisper of wind through the eaves had chills tickling up her spine. She couldn't hurry the job, either, in case she made mistakes in replacing the items precisely as they had been found.

Finally she struck pay dirt. On the table, under a carelessly tossed local newspaper, were cuff links, his gold watch and wallet. She thought, with a faint wry smile, that he certainly did trust his landlady, leaving such wealth lying about. There was over three hundred dollars in the wallet, but to Arianne, the identification cards were of much greater interest.

Credit cards, and he had them all, fell out of his wallet, all bearing his name, Leo Donev. So that must be his rightful name. She sighed disappointedly.

But something was amiss, Arianne felt it in her bones, and when she had a feeling as strong as this one she was never wrong. Something was happening and somehow she was involved, but exactly what was going on? Who else was involved, how and why?

Carefully she put the cards, accordionlike, back into their flap and opened the next one, to be rewarded again. Business cards started sliding out, and she quickly shuffled them back into their initial order. His name was on each card... but each card listed a different business: a travel bureau, a bookstore, a pottery shop, an insurance company, a janitorial service, and a television repair shop. The last one read:

MICROCON, INC.
Investigations Branch
Leo Donev

On the back was a thumbprint that she noticed only when she held the card up to the flashlight. A pattern in clear plastic, unnoticeable really; it had caught her attention only because of the way the beam of light hit upon it at an angle. That was all there was to that card, only the three lines on the front and the thumbprint on the back. No address, no telephone number, no advertising. How curious, indeed.

Fascinated, Arianne stared at the nearly invisible thumbprint. This was serious identification, but not the sort she had thought to find! What did it mean? Where was this sort of identification used?

In sleepy, pretty, old-fashioned Port Townsend, what was he investigating? Puzzling over that question immediately brought the fort to mind and all its recent activity. An admiral, no less, was in residence. Leo was either doing a spot of work for the navy... or to the navy. He was either working for them or against them, and she, merely because she was placed next door, was drawn into the mystery.

Leo's presence at her house could be for exactly that reason: her proximity to the fort, her bird's-eye view of the proceedings down there. That would explain why he chose to be a B and B guest rather than stay in a 1880s hotel on the quaint main street of the town. And Erin's case of appendicitis had played right into his hands.

With great attention to detail, Arianne replaced the items on the table just as they had been and tossed the newspaper back over them for the perfect touch. Then she moved on to the books on the table. There were two on history, two concerning advanced computer technology and one that she recognized, for she'd studied it herself: a layman's very comprehensive study of the psychic sciences.

Her nerves began to quiver. Her heart pumped blood through her veins in a rush. Was she a part of his investigations?

After replacing the books back into their original haphazard heap, she went on to the suitcase on the chair. It was full of what appeared to be freshly laundered clothes, and Arianne was amazed to discover she hadn't a clue as to how he did his laundry. He'd lived with her five weeks in total, and she'd never seen him coming or going with a laundry bag. Nor had he ever asked her for such a service. He must have it done in town... or at the fort? If he was having it done at the fort, then they must know him, so he must be working for and not against them....

She was about to close the suitcase on the neat stack of shirts, faultlessly pressed, and consider the snoop done, when she figured she had better finish the job properly. Having come so far and trespassed so completely, there was no reason to stop short. Memorizing the configuration of shirts on top, she began to empty the suitcase very methodically. Right at the bottom was a slender leather file folder and inside, a sheaf of papers.

With a return of the warning prickles, she drew the material out. There were many sheets, but because of the quality of the paper they made only a very thin sheaf. Training her flashlight on the pages, she saw at first glance that they appeared to be photostats of newspaper clippings and business letters.

She put the papers on the table. Bending low over them and holding the flashlight to best advantage, she began to read some of the print. After a second she caught her breath and peeled the first page over to scan the next and the next. And there on the third was a small black-and-white newspaper photo of her, column width. There was one of Reggie, one of Reggie's mistress and one of her supposed lover, the insurance-agency detective.

Arianne moaned in the darkness of the room. Everything was there, the whole horrifying kidnapping case, as well as background on her and her mother, the medium. There were personal statements witnessed and signed by several of her clients, among them the agency detective and the police captain who had used her services.

Then there were more clippings, about Reggie's affair and the divorce and the settlement—the one candlestick, the cloisonne candlestick that stood downstairs. Her disgust mounted as she saw an article concerning the supposed romantic relationship between her and the young detective who kept on coming to her for help in proving insurance fraud. But there was more yet, about her sudden disappearance, and at last, a letter written by a professor of psychic studies. Before her marriage to Reggie, Dr. Mathias Dickenson had requested her as a test subject for ESP experiments, and she had agreed.

But, later, Reggie and Mrs. Sutherland had shown the professor the door on more than one occasion. In the end Arianne had refused to see him, to preserve the peace at home.. .and it was all down in black and white, in Leo's suitcase, all of it.

Arianne spotted the date on Dr. Dickenson's letter and there was another gasp of dismay in the quiet of Leo's room. Apparently it had been signed not more than three weeks ago! She must have made an impression on the doctor for him to remember the details of events that had happened so long ago!

At the end of the letter she came across a few sentences that said such was the case:

Arianne Sawyer, or Anne Sutherland as she was known during her marriage, was the most profound example of psychic phenomena I have ever discovered. The few test sheets enclosed will bear me out. At times in our short acquaintance her accuracy made my hair stand on end, and, Mr. Donev, I am a man of science. My hair does not easily stand on end. What a sad day for me when she refused...

Arianne put her hand over her heart to try to muffle its pounding. She straightened and wiped a trembling hand across her brow. The doctor's letter, addressed to Leo and referring to him more than once in the contents, was ample proof that this delicate sheaf of paper was his effort. There was enough information here to sink a ship. Just whose ship was Mr. Donev looking to sink?

Painstakingly Arianne restacked the sheets and returned the papers to the leather file. Then she put the file back in the suitcase and arranged the shirts as before. She closed the suitcase and studied the room to assure herself everything was as it had been when she came in. Tiptoeing to the door, letting herself out, she felt sorry for every spy who had ever had to tiptoe out of a dark room. Out on neutral territory of the landing a vast sigh of relief escaped her.