Cry for the Strangers (16 page)

“I was going to come out and look for him but your mother needed me,” he explained. “We were talking, and as soon as we finished, I’d have come out looking.”

Robby peered doubtfully at his father, wanting to believe him, and Glen shifted his own gaze to Brad Randall.

“You haven’t seen a dog out here, have you?” he asked doubtfully. Elaine’s eyes darted to the child, and she bit her lip.

“We’ve only been here a few minutes ourselves,” she said, evading the question entirely. She’d tell Palmer the bad news when the boy was out of hearing. “We wanted to see what the place looked like at night.”

Glen looked puzzled. “Sod Beach?”

“The house,” Elaine explained. “We rented the old house today.” She gestured in the direction of the dilapidated structure, but Glen’s puzzlement only seemed to deepen.

“Whalen rented it to you?” he asked. He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“He didn’t seem too eager but he gave in,” Brad said with a chuckle. The chuckle faded as he remembered the police chiefs odd behavior just before the lease was signed, but he didn’t mention it to Glen.

“He wouldn’t rent it to me at all,” Glen said almost bitterly. Then he brightened. “Say, why don’t you walk
up the beach with me? Rebecca’s waiting for me—all upset about Robby—and I’d better get back. Besides, you promised to stop by yesterday and then you didn’t. Rebecca hasn’t said anything but I think she’s disappointed. Frankly, she doesn’t have many people to talk to out here.”

“Of course,” Elaine said immediately. “We should have stopped today but we’ve just been so busy. I mean, coming to a decision like the one we just made takes all your concentration. But it was rude of us, wasn’t it?” She took Glen’s arm and started up the beach, leaving Brad to walk with Robby. Brad, sensing immediately that his wife was going to tell Glen about the dog, kept Robby occupied. And while he kept the boy busy, he observed him.

The change in Robby was as dramatic as Glen had described it Not a trace remained of the frenetic, anguished child Brad Randall remembered so vividly. Instead, he found himself walking along the beach with a remarkably normal nine-year-old boy, a child who was obviously active, but not overactive; who talked easily, readily, but not with the frenzied pace he had constantly displayed only months before. As they walked Brad found his puzzlement at the change deepening, found himself wondering exactly what could have happened to Robby Palmer, or what might still be happening to him. The boy was almost
too
normal. Brad found it vaguely disturbing.…

When she was sure they were out of earshot of her husband and Glen Palmer’s son, Elaine suddenly turned to Glen. “Was your dog black-and-white, sort of a spaniel?”

“You’ve seen him?” Glen asked eagerly.

“I think so,” Elaine replied, her voice somber. “Yesterday morning I took a walk on the beach. I found a dead dog, buried in the sand. It was medium-sized, black with whitish patches.”

“That sounds like Snooker,” Glen said. “He was a mutt, but there was a lot of springer spaniel in him.” He paused for a moment, then: “You say he was buried in the sand?”

“Not very deep. The sea might have done it, I suppose, but I’m not sure. His neck was broken.”

Glen stopped and turned to face Elaine. “Broken? What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Elaine said unhappily. “He didn’t seem to have any other injuries, but his neck was broken. Brad said he could have been hit by a piece of driftwood that was coming in on the surf the night before.…” She trailed off, thinking the story sounded hollow. As if he read her mind, Glen shook Ids head.

“Doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?”

“I didn’t think so,” Elaine said. “I suppose I should have told you before, but I didn’t want to, not in front of Robby.”

“Of course not,” Glen agreed. “I’ll wait a day or so—maybe try to find the kids a new puppy—then tell them. Or maybe I won’t tell them at all. I’ll just find them another dog and that’ll take their minds off Snooker.”

Robby and Brad caught up with them in the trees in front of the Palmers’ cabin, and as they approached, Glen called to his wife.

“Rebecca? Come on out here—we’ve got company!”

Rebecca appeared at the door and, seeing her son,
immediately swept him into her arms. Robby wriggled, protesting that he was fine, and finally Rebecca let him go, straightened up, and looked with surprise at Brad and Elaine.

“You remember Dr. Randall, of course,” Glen said. “This is his wife, Elaine. I found them on the beach near the old Baron house. They’ve leased it and we’re going to be neighbors, so I brought them home for a glass of wine.”

“Come in,” Rebecca urged them. “It’s not nearly as big as the house you got, but there’s room for everyone.” She led Brad and Elaine into the small main room and pressed them to take the two chairs usually reserved for her and Glen. “Let me get Robby settled in bed. Glen, why don’t you open the wine?” She disappeared into the tiny bedroom, and while Glen poured four glasses of wine Elaine and Brad inspected the cabin, Brad curiously, and Elaine carefully. By the time Rebecca reappeared Elaine was ready.

“Can you really cook on that stove?” she asked, making the question almost a challenge.

Rebecca looked blank for a second, then burst into laughter.

“It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” she said. “Come here and I’ll show you what happens.” She bent over the stove with Elaine, demonstrating how the various vents worked and how to control the fire so that the burners would operate at various levels of heat.

“The main trick is to keep the fire fairly small so that you can move it around and control it Otherwise the thing gets so hot you can’t even get close to
it But if your husband is anything like mine,” she finished, “you won’t have any problem—there won’t ever be enough wood to build a really big fire.”

Elaine shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something tells me we’re going to be eating out a lot.”

“We can’t,” Rebecca said. “And even if we could, we wouldn’t. Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve gotten to the point where I actually enjoy cooking on this thing. The worst part of living on the beach is bathing.”

“My God,” Elaine breathed, closing her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision. “I hadn’t even thought about that!”

“You’ll learn to
dream
about it,” Rebecca laughed.

Elaine turned to her husband. “Did you hear that, Brad?”

“I heard.” Brad looked unconcerned. “And I know perfectly well that I’m capable of getting myself spotless in one small pan of hot water. And after I’ve bathed in it, I can shave in it.”

Elaine gaped at him. “You? You’re the one who loves to use up all the hot water with twenty-minute showers.”

“If it’s available, why not?” Brad countered. “But loving to do it and having to do it are two different things. Just give me a couple of quarts of hot water—I’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Elaine said sarcastically. “Then you can boil a gallon at a time and I’ll use what’s left.”

“Before we get too involved in the glories of primitive living,” Glen interrupted, “I have a question. How on earth did you get Harney Whalen to rent you the old Baron house? We tried, and he absolutely refused.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to rent to someone with children,” Elaine suggested.

“That old house?” Rebecca said. “I don’t mean to sound negative—God knows it’s a lot better than this—but still, it isn’t a place children can do much damage to.”

“It was something else,” Glen said. “I’m still not sure exactly what it was. I thought it had something to do with us personally at first, but then I changed my mind I figured he just didn’t want to rent the house at all, especially to strangers. I guess I was wrong.”

“I’m not so sure,” Brad said pensively. “He wasn’t eager to rent to us either. When he finally did he was acting strange, almost as though he was thinking about something else entirely.”

“That
is
strange,” Rebecca commented.

“This whole place is strange,” Brad offered. “I think I’ll write a book about it.”

“A book?” Glen looked at Brad critically, then shook his head. “Nope. You don’t look like a writer.”

“I’m not,” Brad said. “But I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for a long time. Now seems like a good time to do it, and Sod Beach seems like a good place. So here we are.”

“Just like that?” Rebecca asked.

“Well, not quite,” Elaine replied. “We have to go back to Seattle and dose up our house. But I should think we’ll be moving out here in a couple of weeks.”

“Two weeks,” Rebecca said, almost under her breath. “I can make it that long.” She hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but everyone in the room heard her.
Glen looked embarrassed, but Brad decided to probe.

“I’m not sure what that means,” he said with a tentative smile that he hoped would put Rebecca at her ease.

Rebecca flushed a deep red and tried to recover herself. “Nothing, really,” she began. Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I do mean something by it,” she said. “It’s damned lonely out here and sometimes I’m frightened. You have no idea how glad I am that you’re going to be living just down the beach. I know it may sound strange since I barely know you, but sometimes this place gets to me. Now I won’t be the only one.”

“The only one?” Elaine repeated Rebecca’s last words.

“The only stranger here,” Rebecca said. Then she looked from Brad to Elaine, her expression almost panicky. “You
are
strangers here, aren’t you? You don’t have relatives in Clark’s Harbor?”

“I see,” Elaine said, leaning back and relaxing. She smiled at Rebecca. “No, we don’t know a soul here except you, and we’re not related to anybody, and,” she added in a rush, “I know exactly what you’re talking about It’s not easy to be a stranger in Clark’s Harbor, is it?”

“It’s terrible,” Rebecca said softly. “Sometimes I’ve wanted to just pick up and leave.”

“Why haven’t you?” Elaine asked.

“Lots of reasons,” Rebecca said vaguely. “We’ve got most of our money tied up here—not that there’s very much of it. If we were to leave now we wouldn’t have anything left.”

“And, of course, there’s Robby,” Glen added quietly.

Rebecca looked almost embarrassed but Brad picked the subject of Robby up with apparent eagerness. “The change in him is almost unbelievable. In fact, if I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t have believed you. And you don’t have any idea what caused it?”

“Not the slightest.” Glen shrugged. “But we aren’t about to question it either. As long as Robby stays the way he is now, we’ll stay in Clark’s Harbor, come what may.”

“How bad has it been?” Elaine asked. “Or am I prying?”

“You’re not prying at all,” Rebecca said emphatically. “In fact, maybe it would be good for us to talk about it, just to hear what someone else thinks. Sometimes we think we’re paranoid about Clark’s Harbor. But frankly, I hate to subject you to it—it’s so depressing.” She picked up the bottle of wine and refilled everyone’s glass.

“Oh, come on,” Elaine said. “If nothing else at least it’ll let us know what we’re in for.”

Softly, almost as if she were ashamed, Rebecca explained how they had come to feel that the whole town was somehow united against them. “But there’s never anything you can put your finger on,” Glen finished. “Every time something goes wrong there’s always a reasonable explanation. Except that I always have the unreasonable feeling that if I weren’t a stranger here none of it would ever have gone wrong at all. And then, of course, there was this morning.”

“This morning?” Elaine thought a moment. “Oh, you mean Mrs. Shelling?”

Glen nodded and Rebecca’s face tightened.

“Did you know her?” Brad probed.

“Not really,” Glen said. “I ran into her last night on the beach. Apparently just before she did it.”

“Just before she did it?” Elaine echoed. “You don’t mean—?”

“It happened on our property,” Glen said. “Our land goes back into the woods to the road, then parallels the road for a hundred feet or so. Miriam Shelling hanged herself from one of our trees.”

“Oh, God,” Elaine said softly. “I’m so sorry. Rebecca—it must have been terrible for you.”

“I keep seeing her,” Rebecca whispered. “Every time I close my eyes I keep seeing her. And the kids—what if one of them had seen her?”

“But it wasn’t anything to do with you,” Brad said.

“Wasn’t it?” Rebecca’s face was bleak. “I keep wondering. We talked to Miriam yesterday. She came to the gallery and started ranting at us. We thought she was just upset—”

“Obviously she was,” Brad pointed out.

“She kept saying ‘they’ got her husband and ‘they’ were going to get us too. And then last night—” Rebecca broke off her sentence and fought to keep from bursting into tears. While she struggled to hold herself together, her husband spoke.

“So you can see, it hasn’t been easy.” He laughed self-consciously. “Some welcome we’re giving you, huh? Really makes you want to settle down here, doesn’t it?”

“Actually, yes, it does,” Brad said. The Palmers stared at him. “You mentioned paranoia, and I’m not sure you were so far off base. You two have been living in pretty much of a vacuum out here as far as I
can tell. Odd things happen in vacuums. Things get blown all out of proportion. Things that would seem small in ordinary circumstances suddenly seem terribly important And the longer it goes on, the worse it all seems to get But the key word is ‘seems.’ How bad are things, really? Are you going to be able to open the gallery before you run out of money?”

“It looks like it, but I’m not sure how we’ve managed.”

“You want me to tell you? By working steadily along, dealing with whatever has happened. Actually, everything has gone pretty much according to plan, hasn’t it?”

“Well, I’d hoped to have the gallery open by now—”

“Hoped,” Brad pounced. “But what had you
planned
on?”

Glen grinned sheepishly. “Actually, if you get right down to it, I’m a little bit ahead of schedule. I allowed a lot of time for clumsiness.”

“So what’s really gotten to you is the attitude you’ve run into, or more accurately, what you
think
you’ve run into.”