Sketcher in the Rye: (18 page)

Chapter 21

Helene was the first to react. Jumping up from her seat, she yelled for him to get up. Behind him in a flash, she tried to apply the Heimlich maneuver, but she'd never done it before, and it wasn't working. Aaron grabbed her hands in a desperate effort to add his strength to hers, but his face was already turning a scary ashen color.

“Get over here and help me,” Helene screamed at her family, all of whom seemed frozen in panic. Rory flew to her aunt's side. She had only the barest recollection of what to do, but she had to try. It was just too awful, too ridiculous to think that Aaron could be dead in moments, felled by a mouthful of Thanksgiving. But before she and Helene could change places, a lump of dinner roll flew out of Aaron's mouth and he collapsed onto his chair, coughing and sputtering.

To Rory's relief, his skin quickly turned from a mottled gray to a healthy pink. Although she wanted to have him checked out at the emergency room, he pulled rank on her. “Hold on there,” he said. “As the only doctor in the house, I believe I'm the most qualified to make that decision.” The remark bought a round of nervous laugher that swept the last of the tension from the room. Everyone started talking, comparing experiences they'd had and reminding one another that incidents like this were a wakeup call not to sweat the small stuff. And didn't this really put the “thankful” into Thanksgiving?

Once Aaron had a chance to catch his breath, he went over to thank Helene, catching her up in a grateful bear hug. After he released her, she tottered for a moment before regaining her balance. For the first time, Rory noticed how pale and shaken she looked, as if the gravity of the situation had finally hit her. “Are you okay?” she asked, taking her aunt's hand and leading her aside.

Helene's eyebrows were bunched together like tiny fists. “I don't know what just happened,” she said, her voice trembling.

“You saved Aaron's life.”

“No, I didn't. I wasn't doing it right or I wasn't strong enough, whatever. It wasn't working,” she said, locking her troubled eyes on her niece.

“What are you saying?”

“I'd started to loosen my grip, so you could take over and that's when . . . when I got this electric charge—like a shock, no, not a normal shock,” she corrected herself, “more like a powerful surge of energy.”

Zeke, Rory realized with a start. Zeke had saved Aaron's life. But she couldn't tell her aunt the truth. Helene had never been very good at keeping secrets, regardless of how hard she tried. She'd go crazy trying to keep something of this magnitude quiet. In the end, it would all come spilling out, and she'd be ravaged by guilt. “Come on, you've heard of things like this,” Rory said. “You know, when adrenalin gives someone superhuman strength in a life or death situation. There are lots of documented cases of ordinary people doing amazing things, like lifting a car off a loved one.”

Helene's expression said she wasn't buying the explanation. “You don't understand,” she protested, “I was hardly—”

“Aunt Helene,” Rory said gently, cutting her off before she could sink any deeper into the quicksand of her doubts, “you can't expect to remember things exactly as they happened during such a traumatic event. Time gets all scrambled in the brain; the order of events becomes confused. I've read all about it.”

“I guess,” Helene murmured without much conviction.

“Look, there's nothing to be gained by dwelling on the details,” Rory went on. “What difference does it make how it happened or how you remember it happening? All that matters is that Aaron is alive because of you.” Unable to come up with more convincing words, she drew her aunt into a tight embrace, hoping time would whittle away at her remaining doubts.

The rest of the meal proceeded without further incident and with a lot less conversation. Everyone was focused on cutting their food into small bites and being careful not to eat and talk at the same time. Aaron had lost his appetite, which was understandable, but he appeared to be fine in every other respect. By the time dessert was served, he'd recovered enough to have a piece of the pumpkin pie and some of the apple pie with ice cream.

Before they started cleaning up, Rory excused herself to use the bathroom. She ran upstairs, where there was less chance of anyone overhearing her. The dressing down she'd considered giving the marshal hours ago had been supplanted by the praise she wanted to heap on him now. An unsettling thought occurred to her. Would Zeke have saved Aaron's life if they'd had a big blowup earlier? For that matter, what if she'd sent him home as punishment, or he'd left in a snit? Let it go, she told herself; what's the point of dwelling on what might have happened? Listen to your own advice and just be grateful everything's okay.

“Zeke,” she called in a loud whisper, expecting him to pop right up. He'd never been reluctant to accept her gratitude. She called out to him again and waited. Five minutes passed, but he didn't show. She told herself he'd gone home to rest after expending his energy, but she didn't really believe that. He couldn't have depleted himself with that one act. She had a working knowledge of how much it took to sap his energy these days, and saving Aaron didn't come close to pushing the envelope. The marshal's absence was a mystery that would have to wait until she went home.

Cousin George had left for the airport shortly after they'd finished dinner. And although Aaron insisted on helping to clear the table, he was willing enough to head home once that was accomplished. Without other guests to entertain, Rory's dad pitched in to help put away the good china and all the platters and serving dishes that were only used for the holidays.

Helene was the next to leave, still wearing a slightly bewildered expression. Rory had hooked Hobo's leash to his collar and was putting on her coat when her mother asked her to wait a minute. She reappeared carrying a cardboard box with the top flaps still open. “Please hang on to this for me until we're done moving,” she said, setting the box on the kitchen table. “I don't want to take a chance on losing the things in here.”

Rory peered inside. There were half a dozen photograph albums of various sizes, including the one her mother had recently shown her. She was more than happy to take them. She'd wanted to have another look at the old pictures anyway.

***

Zeke was nowhere in sight when Rory and Hobo returned home. She unhooked the dog's leash, then carried the cardboard box up to the study, where it would be out of the way until she had time to go through it. Now that she was home, she was starting to realize just how exhausted she was. Apprehension and anxiety packed a powerful one-two punch. Even though it was still early, she changed into her cuddliest pj's and pulled on her old bathrobe and furry slippers. Hobo, who didn't need to bother changing, was already out cold and snoring on the living-room couch, no doubt dreaming about Christmas goodies to come.

Rory went into the kitchen and set the teapot on the stove, thinking that maybe another cup of hot liquid would help her digest all she'd eaten. Stress and a full stomach were clearly not compatible. When the tea was ready, she took it upstairs to the study and settled herself in the reading chair before calling for the marshal.

He didn't appear immediately, and when he did, he was surprisingly nonchalant. Rory had braced herself for some peacock strutting, given that he'd saved the day, but Zeke tucked himself into the chair behind her desk with only the thinnest of smiles.

“I don't know how to thank you,” she said immediately. “Without your help, Aaron wouldn't—”

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted her. “I'm a regular hero. Is that all you wanted to say?”

“No, I mean that was a big part of it, but . . . why did you leave so abruptly?”

“I was tired and I figured you could manage on your own for a little while. At least you're always tellin' me how you can.”

“What's on your mind, Marshal?” she asked bluntly.

“Your boyfriend needs to show you more respect,” he said without preamble.

Bingo—there it was. But how could she possibly demand that he get over it and get in tune with the times, when he'd just saved Aaron's life? So she swallowed the little speech she'd prepared earlier and said she'd talk to Aaron about it. Of course she had no idea how to go about such a discussion, without giving Aaron the impression that she was a closet Puritan or planning to enter a convent. “Just to be clear,” she said, “you do realize that he didn't know you were there?”

“I'm well aware of the fact that I was invisible, but
anyone
could have walked into that room at any moment.”

And the walls might have fallen down and left us exposed to the whole wide world, she felt like screaming in exasperation. But instead she said, “It was just a kiss.

“This time.” Zeke seemed determined to stand his ground, even if he knew how ridiculous he sounded, how out of proportion his reaction was to a simple kiss.

Rory's gratitude had a brief knock-down-drag-out with her natural inclination to set him straight. Her gratitude won. But only by the slimmest of margins. With nothing left to say on the subject, she drank her tea, which was no longer hot or comforting.

“What's in the box?” Zeke asked, breaking the silence between them. His black mood seemed to have lifted now that he'd said his piece. Rory wished she could feel as settled about the matter. But she knew that by placating him today, she'd set a bad precedent for future battles on the subject. She wasn't going to be the prim and proper lady he expected, and he didn't seem willing to adjust his way of thinking. All of his supposed progress since she'd met him had been snuffed out in an instant, leaving them locked in the same old stalemate. But after a long and harrowing day, she was more than willing to play Scarlett O'Hara and think about it tomorrow.

“Some photo albums my mother asked me to keep here until after the move,” she replied.

“Mind if I take a look-see?” Before she had a chance to answer, he was hunkered down next to the box. He pulled out one album and started flipping through the photos in their plastic sleeves. “What
is
this place?” he asked.

Rory leaned over to see what he was looking at. “That's Disney World—my first time there. I think I was six.” After setting her empty teacup on the desk, she joined Zeke on the floor, sitting close enough to see the pictures. She couldn't remember the last time she'd looked at them.

Zeke seemed fascinated by the concept of such a huge and fabulous place created just for having fun. He roared with laughter when he saw Rory wearing her Mickey Mouse ears in one photo and being hugged by an enormous Pluto in another. The next album he picked had pictures from her first ten birthday parties. Her father had put them together to have a sort of time-lapse memento of her childhood.

“You were cute as a button,” Zeke remarked with a wink. “At least till you turned nine.”

“Thanks,” she said wryly. “Nine through eleven were my awkward years.”

“Well, you did a mighty fine job of growin' out of them, darlin',” he said, taking a third album from the box.

“Hold on,” Rory said when she realized it was the album from her grandmother's attic. “We need to be really careful with that one.” Even though Zeke had refined his technique for “handling” objects of different sizes and masses, it was far from foolproof. Just one elevated pulse of energy could cause irreparable damage to something so old and fragile.

“I'll be careful,” he said, with the album hovering above his open palms. “Don't be such a nervous Nellie. It's been a long time since I've destroyed anythin'.”

Somehow the remark didn't make her feel any better, but she bit her lip.

Zeke opened the album in exaggerated slow motion to make his point. A frown pleated his brow as he studied the first photograph. “It's hard to make out much detail,” he muttered, holding it up to the light of the desk lamp and squinting at it from different angles.

“I know,” Rory said. “It's a shame how those early pictures have degraded. According to my mother, that should be . . . ” She paused, trying to recall what she'd been told. “My great-great-great-great grandmother with her family. The photos near the end are a lot clearer.”

After going through the remainder of the album, Zeke put it and the other two he'd seen back in the box. “I believe I'll turn in,” he said, doing a good approximation of a yawn. “I'll have a look at the others another time.”

Rory wished him good night and took her teacup down to the kitchen. Hobo was still snoring away on the living-room couch, but if she didn't wake him to go outside now, he was bound to wake her in the middle of the night. When she called his name, he opened one sleepy eye, which promptly shut again. So she used her guaranteed Hobo-waker. She took two small pieces of American cheese out of the refrigerator and held one under his nose. In two seconds flat, his eyes were open, along with his mouth. She used the second piece to lure him off the couch and over to the kitchen door. After swallowing the cheese, he trotted outside without additional bribery. Rory wondered how long it would take him to realize that he could wangle more cheese from her by holding out a little longer.

Once Hobo was back inside, she locked the door and turned off the lights, and the two of them climbed the stairs. Hobo hopped on her bed, circled a few times, and was asleep an instant after he lay down. It took Rory a lot longer to calm her mind after all the events of the day. She was finally drifting off when an intriguing thought tugged her back from the edge.

Chapter 22

Rory threw off the covers and padded into the study without wasting time to put on her robe. She grabbed her sketch pad from the top of the filing cabinets and opened it to the last sketch Eloise had insisted she draw. Sketch in hand, she sat down beside the box of albums.

She took the old album out of the box and opened it to the first of the faded photographs. Holding her sketch up beside it, she compared the two. It was no slam-dunk, but neither was it beyond the realm of possibility that her great-great-great-great grandmother was the woman Eloise had described to her. The shape of the head appeared to be the same, along with the general arrangement of the features. But in the photo, her hair was piled on top of her head, not loose around her face the way Rory had been told to draw it. She sat there on the floor for several more minutes trying to imagine why her ancestor from so long ago might have reached out to her through Eloise. Wait, she corrected herself. Eloise had said it was the woman's daughter who had contacted her and shown her a photo of her mother. Why hadn't her great-great-great-great grandmother simply contacted Eloise herself? Surely there was some reason behind it, and more important, behind the daughter's need to communicate from the other side. But it was all getting too confusing for Rory's weary mind. Besides, she wasn't even sure the sketch depicted someone related to her. Until she had more information, it was nothing but pointless speculation.

***

She awoke the next morning more refreshed but with the same questions tweaking her brain and no answers in sight. Before she had a chance to climb out of bed, the phone started ringing. Hobo, who was lying stretched out at the foot of the bed, grumbled and drew himself into a furry ball as if that could insulate him against the intrusions of the world. By the clock on Rory's nightstand, it was not yet seven a.m. Her heart did a little flip-flop in her chest. Since social convention dictated that you wait until a civilized time to make phone calls, it was generally bad news that rode the early morning hours. She picked up the receiver, wary of what awaited her. Gil Harper was on the other end.

“I'm glad I got you at home,” he said after a perfunctory hello.

“Well I'm generally home at the crack of dawn,” she responded, unless I have to meet your son Luke at some ridiculous hour. “What can I do for you, Gil?” It was hard to be polite before she'd had her coffee.

“I want you to stop investigating my wife.”

“I'm only investigating her because you told me to,” she pointed out.

“Well, now I'm telling you not to.” He was definitely not in a happy place.

“Has something changed with regard to the case?”

“Yeah—Ellen's threatening to divorce me.”

On one hand, Rory was glad to hear that Ellen had found the courage to stand up for herself. On the other, if Ellen was the killer, eliminating her as a suspect would put them at a serious disadvantage. “I'm afraid I don't understand,” she said to see if she could ferret anything else out of Grumpy.

“She's taken exception to being investigated. She said a marriage is supposed to be based on trust, and if I can't trust her, she doesn't want to be married to me anymore. Listen, long as I have you on the phone, how's the case going? Zeroing in anyone yet?” Gil was making her uncaffeinated head spin.

“Getting closer by the day,” she said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. They had enough suspects, but they were still a long way from naming Matthew's killer or the farm's saboteur. She promised him a detailed report in the near future.

When she hung up the phone, she saw Zeke standing in her bedroom doorway, respecting the privacy clause in their verbal contract. She related the salient points of the phone call to him, which he shrugged off in favor of addressing his own agenda.

“I'd be mighty obliged if you'd give Eloise a call on my behalf,” he said. Despite his progress in other areas, using telephones was still problematic for him “Tell her she needs to come over here ASAP.”

Zeke speaking in acronyms was generally enough to tickle Rory's funny bone, but today Gil had tainted her perspective. “Why do you need to see her?”

“You know, not everything's your business,” he said curtly.

Boy, everyone was in a foul mood today. And it was apparently contagious. Rory felt like pulling the covers back over her head and not resurfacing for twenty-four hours. But life refused to be put on hold. Hobo had given up trying to sleep with all the chatter. He jumped off the bed with a pointed huff of exasperation and headed straight for the stairs, which meant he needed to go outside. Rory knew from experience that ignoring a large dog with a full bladder was risky business. Given that her pj's were less seductive than a nun's habit, she dragged herself out of bed with the marshal still looking on. Since they'd met Eloise last spring, his attitude toward her had been in a constant state of flux. At first he'd forbidden Rory to have anything to do with her; then he'd collaborated with her in an effort to keep Rory safe, after which he'd gone back to banning her from the premises again. What was he up to now? “What if Eloise wants to know why you need her?” she asked, forgoing her robe and slippers in the name of expediency.

“She doesn't always tell you what she wants until you get over there,” he countered. “What's good for the goose is—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She had to squeeze past him to follow Hobo. “But Eloise doesn't operate on logic, in case you haven't noticed.”

Hobo was doing his little “let me out” tap dance when she reached the kitchen door. With just his four paws, he sounded like a whole Riverdance ensemble. The instant she opened the door, he spotted a squirrel at the base of a nearby oak tree and took off after it at warp speed. As usual the squirrel scampered up the tree to safety. One day Rory expected to find the dog clinging to a limb of a tree with no idea how to climb down.

“Then you'll call her?” Zeke asked, having followed her into the kitchen.

“As long as I can have my coffee first.”

***

Twenty minutes later the doorbell rang—twice. Eloise always got miffed if Olga reached for the bell first. Rory opened the door, still in her pj's. With Eloise's impromptu visits at odd hours, she'd had to answer the door in as little as a towel. As a result, she no longer worried about her attire when entertaining her elderly neighbor and her aide.

Under her jacket, Eloise was sporting yellow pajama bottoms featuring teddy bears, along with an oversized navy sweatshirt. Red flip-flops completed the ensemble. Her hair was combed neatly on one side but was sticking up at strange angles on the other. The odds were she'd lost patience with Olga halfway through the grooming process. Olga was the most elegantly dressed of them all in pants and a sweater that went nicely together along with a neutral pea coat. She was in her usual state of nervous agitation. “Here are we,” she announced when Rory opened the door. “Is everything being okay?”

“Yes, I'm sorry to have bothered you so early in the morning,” Rory said. “I'm afraid the marshal can be very insistent.” Rory noticed how Olga's eyes lit up at the mention of Zeke. It was obvious the woman still had a major crush on him. In spite of every effort to keep his existence a secret, Rory had had no choice but to introduce him to the aide several months earlier during one of Eloise's visits. Luckily Olga had been so charmed by him that she hadn't seemed to notice when he started to lose cohesion.

“I am understanding. Miss Eloise is top expert at being demanding,” Olga said as she stepped inside after her charge.

Rory took their coats and led them into the living room, where she asked them to make themselves comfortable. “Marshal, your guests are here,” she called once they were seated on the couch. Zeke walked in from the direction of the kitchen. He greeted them from a distance that made shaking hands impossible. Instead he dipped his head as though he was wearing a cowboy hat. Olga started blinking so fast that Rory thought she might swoon. And here she was with no smelling salts in the house.

“Mornin' ladies,” he said pleasantly, but his expression was anything but cordial. He perched on the edge of the armchair diagonally across from them. Olga didn't seem to have noticed his stony face. She blushed a feverish red, stumbling all over her “hello.” Eloise asked if she could have ice cream.

“Later,” Zeke said. He turned to Rory, who was hovering between his chair and the window, hoping to go unnoticed. “Some privacy, please.”

Although her curiosity was approaching critical mass, she excused herself to shower and dress. Marching up the stairs, she debated whether to risk eavesdropping on the conversation. Common sense and her conscience won out. She couldn't expect Zeke to respect her privacy if she failed to respect his. But before she closed the bathroom door, she heard heated voices rising from below.

***

The women had left by the time Rory came back downstairs. Zeke was still in the living room, staring off into space as he absently scratched Hobo's ears. “Eloise didn't stay to have her ice cream?” she asked in surprise.

“She didn't mention it again,” he said, looking up at her.

“Whoa—she must have been pretty angry. I've never seen her forget about her favorite treat. What were you arguing about?” she added casually.

“Let it go, Rory. Like I said before—not everything concerns you.”

“I guess I should start keeping secrets too,” she muttered, loud enough for him to hear. She was coming down with a serious case of too-much-togetherness. She headed for the closet beneath the stairs, grabbed her parka and stalked out the kitchen door to work in her office behind the house. She needed to get away from the marshal for a while. Of course he could easily pop in on her there too, but he preferred not to use up his energy that way.

He watched her leave without asking a single question. She would not have deigned to answer them anyway, and he probably knew that. She was halfway across the yard when she heard her business phone ringing in the house and in her office. Rather than backtrack, she ran the rest of the way to the office. It was barely nine o'clock, but there'd already been so much going on that it seemed like it should have been noon at the very least.

By the time she unlocked the door and picked up the receiver, Anya Dmitriev was about to leave a message. In a voice still hollowed by grief, she said she hoped it wasn't too early to call and wondered if she could stop by. Rory assured her that would be fine, explained that the office was situated at the far end of her driveway and said she'd be expecting her.