Carlene Thompson Read online

  "I love the colors," Lucy persisted.

  "Yes," Pamela said languidly. Then her arched eyebrows drew together fretfully. "But I wonder if we shouldn't have gone with brown and burnt orange."

  "Brown and orange!" Lucy snapped. "But you said you loved these colors. Our whole color scheme is based around them."

  "I know. But now I'm just not sure…"

  Lucy took a deep breath and looked earnest. "Earth tones are out of style, Pamela. Really out."

  "They are? Oh…well." Clearly that settled the matter for Pamela, no matter what her tastes. Caroline caught Lucy's fleeting smile of triumph. "At least these colors are interesting," Pamela said magnanimously.

  Lucy's lips compressed in irritation. "As I said, we can't stay. Tina will come by to attach the dining chair covers."

  "Oh, but I wanted to ask you about the color of the carpet in the master bedroom. The Bahama Tan is restful, but I'm not sure I won't get tired of it after a while."

  "But you're not tired of it yet, so let's leave it alone for now, shall we, Pam?" Caroline looked down. When Lucy said things like shall, she was quietly angry. She stood. "Caroline and I really have to be going."

  Pamela rose from the couch like a cat uncurling in the sun. "Well, I guess we can talk about the carpet later. There's also the paint in the second guest bedroom…" She looked from one to the other. "Are you going to lunch?"

  "No, the doctor," Caroline said quickly. "Ophthalmologist. Lucy's driving because I'll get drops in my eyes."

  Did I have to go completely overboard? Caroline wondered as Pamela's velvet gaze found hers and seemed to ferret out the lie. "I see," she said flatly. Then, "By the way, Mrs. Corday, I have one of your husband's paintings I haven't hung yet. It's an oil of sun slanting through a broken barn roof onto a pile of snow on a rusty barbed-wire fence. I don't much like it, but Lucille says it's tasteful."

  "It's beautiful! The play of light and shadow. The attention to detail. The mood of serenity…" Lucy's voice, too high, broke off unhappily after her last cliché.

  Caroline smiled. "Chris and I haven't been married for a long time, but you're very lucky to have one of his paintings, Pamela. He's a brilliant artist."

  "She'll still be a brat when she's eighty," Lucy fumed as they pulled away from the house. "She brought up Chris for pure spite because we didn't invite her to lunch."

  Caroline looked at the acres of brilliantly-hued trees spreading around them. The house was really isolated, she thought, almost like the place where she and Chris used to live. "I suppose it isn't all her fault, Lucy. From what I've heard her parents gave her everything except their time. Her father is obsessed with business and her mother belongs to every club in the city except the bowling league."

  "Her mother couldn't belong to the bowling league. She's big as a whale," Lucy said acidly. "I hope Pamela looks just like her in a few years."

  "Lucy, you're awful!"

  "I just say what you're too nice to say. But honestly, I feel a little sorry for her, too, try as I do not to. She's such a jerk she doesn't have any friends. It's a miracle she found Larry."

  "I guess there's someone for everyone."

  "Leave it to Pamela to find a rich someone."

  Caroline laughed and Lucy looked over at her. "Well, at least you're in a better mood. Want to tell me what was wrong earlier?"

  Caroline suddenly drew inward. In Lucy's bright company, Hayley's voice in the storeroom lost its reality. "Earlier I thought I heard a child in the storeroom."

  Lucy frowned. "A child? In my storeroom? I know I should be more careful about locking those doors! I just go so busy after this morning's delivery."

  "There wasn't a child, Lucy. It was my imagination. The lights went out, and then I thought I heard…Hayley."

  "Oh." Caroline saw Lucy's hand tighten on the steering wheel.

  "It's her birthday, Lucy."

  "I know. I put flowers on her grave this morning."

  "Yeah, well…the mind can play funny tricks, can't it?"

  "Especially on a day like this." Lucy's eyes slewed toward her. "But Caro, if you thought you heard Hayley, it was your imagination. You know that, don't you?"

  "Of course. I said so, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did. Without much conviction."

  "Well, it wasn't you or Tina."

  "No, I don't usually hang around storerooms trying to scare you. And Tina was helping me when you arrived."

  "Then unless there really was a child hiding in the storeroom, I know I imagined it."

  "Well, just to make sure, I'll call Tina as soon as we stop for lunch and ask her to check the storeroom and lock the doors. I don't want to find half-eaten lollipops down in the cushions of my antique settees."

  "You also don't want to have something stolen."

  Lucy took a deep drag on the cigarette she'd lighted as soon as they got in the car, and Caroline said quickly to change the subject, "I wonder how Pamela remembered I was married to Chris?"

  "He's pretty well known around here, Caro. And so are you because you were his wife at the time of Hayley's death."

  "I guess you're right." Her nose was starting to tingle from the cigarette smoke. "Is Chris painting a lot now?"

  "More than he has for years. I've started handling some of his stuff, but he really belongs in galleries. I feel better about him these days, and if he can just leave the women alone, he might be on his way back up."

  Caroline sighed. "Chris and his women."

  "They became his escape after Hayley died."

  "I know. It's just hard to believe he was once a faithful husband. Is he seeing anyone in particular?"

  "He never sees anyone in particular. Whoever's available in the singles' bars is good enough for him." She cast a sideways glance at Caroline. "But that doesn't still bother you, does it?"

  "No, except that I hate to see him make such a waste of his life and his talent, not to mention the risk he's taking with his health. I hoped the AIDS scare would slow him down."

  Lucy crushed out her half-smoked cigarette. "You're awfully generous, considering how he treated you."

  "I wasn't always this forgiving. You know that. I spent years inwardly raging. I even got to the point where I'd catch myself talking out loud, telling him off, saying all the things I was too shattered to say when we divorced."

  "He was hurting a lot back then, too."

  "I know. That's why I couldn't hang on to my bitterness." She looked over at Lucy. "I'm glad you remained his friend, even if I couldn't remain his wife."

  "Chris and I are both misfits. Oddballs. We understand each other."

  "You want to be an oddball, Lucy Elder, but you're not really. Sometimes I think you're a lot more conventional than I am."

  Lucy raised her eyebrows derisively. "I doubt if anyone would agree with you on that one, but believe what you like."

  At Zeppo's Lucy urged Caroline to have a daiquiri with her lunch.

  "Well, just one," Caroline said reluctantly. "I still have some errands to do." An hour later, when her third drink arrived, she looked at Lucy seriously and said, "To hell with the grocery store and dry cleaner. Would you consider going to see that new comedy showing at the two o'clock matinee?"

  "I would absolutely love it! I'll go call Tina again and ask her to hold the fort. She'll probably be relieved to get through an extra two hours without having me around."

  Caroline was surprised. "You were just telling me what a gem she is. Are there problems?"

  "She seems edgy lately. Distracted. Something's on her mind."

  Caroline nodded knowingly. "And you've been trying to pry it out of her."

  Lucy drew back, acting hurt. "Why, Caro, you know I'd never do such a thing." She grinned. "Besides, I already know. She's seeing Lowell Warren."

  "The lawyer?"

  "Senior partner of Warren, Tate and Stern."

  "He seems a little old for her."

  "Late forties. The trouble is, he's also a little married. Of co
urse, Claire is usually off campaigning for one of her causes like Save the Three-toed Sloth or whatever might get her a shot on some rinky-dink talk show, so it's hard to tell she's his wife, but if there's been a divorce, I don't know about it."

  "Are you sure he and Tina are involved?"

  Lucy nodded. "He's called the store three or four times for her that I know of. He didn't leave his name, naturally, but once you've heard that deep, cultured voice you don't forget it. Also, one evening I passed them together in his car." She looked away and sighed. "I just hope she doesn't get hurt."

  "She seems very self-reliant to me, Lucy. And, who knows, maybe Lowell is finally planning on a divorce."

  "In any case, Tina Morgan is a grown woman whose life is absolutely none of my business. So why don't we just forget about her and go have some fun?"

  At the theater Lucy and Caroline bought giant Cokes and two barrels of heavily-buttered popcorn, pretending they hadn't just finished a substantial lunch. "I'm eating like Greg," Caroline said when they settled into the dark, half-empty theater and dug into the popcorn. "Today ought to put ten pounds on me."

  "More likely twenty," Lucy said gravely, "and all on your hips."

  They giggled hysterically as if Lucy had said something amazingly witty, and a middle-aged man down the aisle turned and glared at them, which set them off again.

  When they emerged from the theater a little before four o'clock, Caroline smiled happily. "You've made my day, Lucy. Thanks so much for going with me."

  "I had more fun than you did. I just hope David doesn't get mad if his dinner's ten minutes late." She said the last with a wink, knowing that David rarely got mad at anyone, much less his wife. The two had become fairly good friends after David got over his initial wariness of a woman he said dressed like a beatnik. Caroline reminded him that beatniks had not existed since the fifties, but he refused to update his vocabulary, clinging doggedly to the phrases of his youth.

  Caroline did not go back into the store with Lucy, claiming she was in a hurry to get home. Actually, she wanted to stop at a florist's before five o'clock closing time. She could not let this day pass without putting flowers on Hayley's grave. She chose a bouquet of pink carnations and baby's breath trimmed with lace and a pink bow, and drove to the isolated hillside cemetery where Chris had insisted their daughter be buried. "You can look out over the whole city from up here," he'd said as they stumbled in their grief over the grounds the day after Hayley's body had been identified. They were so young, they'd never thought about buying cemetery lots. Then suddenly they were in immediate need. "I bet it's beautiful up here at night," he went on. Caroline could remember thinking of her baby lying on the cold hillside throughout the long dark hours of night and bursting into violent sobbing for the first time since Hayley had disappeared a month before. Chris had held her for nearly an hour, until she could see clearly enough to walk back to the car.

  Today the hillside looked desolate, with fallen leaves blowing over the graves in a cold wind that had sprung up when the sun abruptly faded ten minutes earlier. Caroline shivered, buttoning her blazer as she walked through the overgrown grass. At the time of Hayley's burial, the cemetery was perfectly maintained. Management had changed since then, though, and in the past few years Caroline noted with despair the growing shabbiness of the grounds. When she complained about the neglect to David, he suggested moving Hayley to a nicer cemetery nearer their home, but the idea of disinterring her child bothered Caroline. Hayley had been through enough without having her final rest disturbed.

  As Caroline drew near Hayley's grave, tears sprang up in her eyes. The angel Chris had lovingly carved from pink Italian marble and set atop her tombstone had been desecrated, its delicate bowed head broken off and thrown a few feet away. Caroline sank to her knees, picking up tiny chips of marble scattered around the sunken plot. They looked raw and fresh, as if they had only just been hacked from the angel. Was it possible someone had done this today? She sat back on her heels, wiping tears from her cold cheeks and asking herself who would do such a thing. Vandals was the obvious answer, but it didn't feel right. None of the other gravestones had been touched. Besides, the destruction seemed too studied, almost as if the violator knew Hayley had been decapitated.

  Slowly Caroline realized she had dropped her bouquet when she spotted the broken angel. She retrieved it and laid it near the tombstone, looking at the cheerful red and white roses Lucy always left on Hayley's birthday and the familiar bunch of violets from Chris. But among them rested a third offering, a cluster of black silk orchids tied with a black velvet ribbon. Puzzled, Caroline picked up the flowers, peering at the round, childish printing on a small card attached to the ribbon:

  To Hayley—Black for Remembrance.

  "Black for remembrance," Caroline breathed. "What on earth?"

  She dropped the bouquet as if it burned her hand. The sky had turned a bruised purple and mauve, and a sharp wind blew up, rocking the pink angel's head so that its dead eyes gazed at her.

  A voice in a deserted storeroom. A shattered angel. A black bouquet. Caroline let out a tiny cry, suddenly breathlessly afraid. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the car, ignoring the gaping old couple slowly making their way to a grave just beyond Hayley's. Spraying gravel behind her, she tore down the steep road and didn't slow down until she hit the rush hour traffic streaming from the city.

  Usually heavy traffic got on her nerves, but this evening she was grateful for the cars on either side of her. They were filled with people some laughing together, some cursing the traffic, some singing along with the radio but all looking ordinary and unafraid, as if their days had held no ghostly voices or desecrated tombstones.

  "Enjoy yourself," Fidelia had told her that morning. Caroline laughed mirthlessly. "Well, I tried, Fidelia," she said aloud. "I guess the stars weren't on my side."

  She got home at six o'clock, and because they had gone off daylight saving time, darkness was already closing in. The dusk-to-dawn light glowed over the driveway, turning everything blue-white, lifeless.

  She let herself into the house and immediately put on a pot of coffee, feeling she needed something to clear her head. Fidelia had left a note in her spiky script on the kitchen counter:

  Hope your day went well. George is chained on the back porch. Didn't know when you would be home and thought he might make a mess.

  Poor George. He would explode before he made a mess in the house, but Fidelia could not be convinced of this. Caroline decided to change into jeans and an old sweater before she braced herself for one of his rowdy greetings. As the coffee began to perk, she walked through the dining room and entrance hall, turning on lights as she went. Tonight she felt like having every light in the house blazing. She had just reached the staircase when from somewhere in the darkness above came a voice:

  "The weather will be clear and dry tonight with a low of forty-seven. Sunshine tomorrow with a high of sixty. And now we return to music with a golden oldie by Peter Frampton, 'Baby, I Love Your Way.'"

  The music began, loud and tinny, as if it were coming from Melinda's transistor radio.

  "Greg, Melinda, are you home?" Caroline called, although she could feel the house's emptiness.

  The radio hadn't been on this morning, and Fidelia never listened to it. In fact, it had been stored in Melinda's dresser drawer since she received a portable radio cassette player last Christmas.

  Caroline went slowly up the stairs to Melinda's closed door at the end of the hall. When she threw the door open, music blared. The hall light glowed into the room as she walked to Melinda's vanity where the transistor lay, going at full volume. She turned it off and stood staring at it in confusion. Who would turn the radio on so loudly and leave it playing in an empty house?

  For the first time Caroline realized how cold the room was. She glanced over to see Melinda's dotted Swiss curtains stirring with the wind as moonlight shone on shards of glass lying on the blue carpet.

  "How did that window
get broken?" she muttered, turning on the overhead light to get a better look. Then she screamed.

  On Melinda's bed grinned Twinkle, the clown doll that had disappeared with Hayley nineteen years ago.

  Chapter 3

  I WOULD LOOK exactly a million times better in a ballerina outfit," Melinda announced, staring at herself in Caroline's full-length mirror.

  "Melinda, it's forty-five degrees out tonight. Do you know how cold you'd get in a tutu and tights? And besides, you wouldn't look a million times better. You look darling."

  "I look like a nerd." Melinda whirled on Caroline, making her big fuzzy rabbit ears sway back and forth. Caroline had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing. "I'll have to resign from third grade."

  "Melinda, you're being ridiculous. You look wonderful, and you'll be warm."

  "Warm! I'll, be a baked rabbit when I get home. It's four hundred and fifty-six degrees in here." Melinda was always precise with numbers. "Mommy, please don't make me go out like this."

  Greg had come to stand in the open doorway, and he winked at Caroline, his dark eyes twinkling like his father's. "Wow, what a terrific costume!"

  Melinda turned. "What did that mean?"

  "What's the matter? Can't you understand English anymore? I said that's a great costume."

  "It is?" Melinda studied herself in the mirror once more, as usual influenced by her adored older brother's approval. "You don't think I look nerdy?"

  "Are you nuts?" He walked over and tweaked the huge bunny tail. "That is really sharp."

  "Yeah? Would you wear it?"

  "Well, it seems more like a girl's outfit, but if I were a girl sure I'd wear it."

  Melinda pursed her mouth at her reflection, black-eyeliner whiskers twitching. "And you won't be embarrassed taking me out trick-or-treating tonight?"

  "Jeez, no. I hope everyone sees us."

  "Okay." With one of her lightning mood changes, Melinda smiled radiantly and ran over to kiss Caroline's cheek. "Thanks for making the outfit, Mommy."

  "You're welcome, punkin pie. And be sure not to eat any of your candy before you bring it home to let Daddy and me have a look at it. And Greg, take…"