Bob turned off the engine of Kay’s car and we sat in silence, looking at the cabin in the headlights.
“Maybe we can spend the night in the car,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
The place was a wreck. I couldn’t understand why Ambrose had sent us here. A sagging porch stretched across the front of a small, weathered building. If any paint had ever graced the wooden walls, it had long since silvered away. The roof was littered with pine needles and leaves, and green things were growing along the edges. Shutters over the windows gave the cabin a lost, blind air.
“We’re here. We might as well get out,” Bob said halfheartedly.
“This can't be the right place,” I said. “Are you sure it's safe? It looks like it will keel over if I lean against a wall.”
“We followed the directions exactly. It's not like we had a lot of roads to choose from,” he pointed out.
“I cannot believe Ambrose ever spent one second of his life here.”
“I know, but this has to be it. There must be more to Ambrose than meets the eye.”
“Well, that’s true,” I admitted. I suddenly remembered a certain period in high school when jocks kept losing their clothes while they were in football practice. They would arrive naked and dripping from the showers to find nothing in their lockers but a note typed on ordinary notebook paper that said, You boys be nice. Oddly enough the only victims were the boys who ganged up on other kids and made their lives a misery because they were not overdeveloped, physically adept and ordained to play high school sports. It didn’t happen every day, just often enough to keep them all edgy. No one ever found out who was doing it, though I always had my suspicions, but the clothes turned up at the local Goodwill store at Christmastime.
Emily Ann reached over the back of the seat and poked my neck with her cold nose. “Okay, Emily Ann, okay, we’ll get out,” I told her, and unclipped my seatbelt.
The two stairs to the porch creaked ominously as I trod on them, and the porch itself had a definite sway. Bob fished the key Ambrose had given him out of his pocket, and fitted it into the lock in the door. After only a minor struggle it turned, proving we had the right place. Damn.
Bob took a deep breath. “Louisa, I am very sorry about all this.” He looked as tired as I felt. It had been a long day.
My throat tightened. I managed to croak, “You haven’t done anything to be sorry for. Open the door.”
He turned the knob and shoved. I expected creaking hinges and festoons of cobwebs to sweep across my face, but the door swung open silently. Bob groped around for the light switch, and flipped it on. We stepped inside and halted.
My first impression was that the room consisted entirely of an enormous bed—it was so magnificent that it was all I could see. Four tall, slender posters were hung with linen draperies, and a matching spread with exquisite cutwork embroidery covered the mattress, which was so high off the floor that a set of steps was necessary to enable one to retire. I felt my cheeks pinken until I noticed the rest of the furniture between me and that bed in the cabin’s single room. A pair of overstuffed chairs and a loveseat, upholstered in dark brown linen, flanked a stone fireplace with logs laid ready to light on its hearth. A low round table filled the space between the seating pieces, and side tables held tall lamps with painted glass bases and linen covered shades. A small kitchen area was to the left, round dining table and four chairs at one end.
I knew from Kay that Ambrose was considered an excellent decorator and had the clients to prove it. Now I saw for myself how this room reached out and wrapped itself around you in a warm welcome.
We took a couple more steps into the room and looked at each other. “Wow,” Bob remarked, and I nodded.
“A little getaway cabin in the woods,” I said. “I wonder if I could get him to work on my house.”
“This is great.”
“I'm sure I could never afford him. Maybe he gives discounts to people he’s known a long time. I could get Kay to ask.”
Resting on the mantel was a large painting of a windswept plain with a single farmhouse in the near distance. An Amish quilt of the center diamond pattern was hung on the wall between the two front windows, its intricate quilting thrown into relief by the light. While Bob opened the shutters to let in some air, I peered closely at the quilt, trying to count the incredibly tiny stitches that made up the feathered rope design.
Jack busied himself checking out the room, sniffing around in a thoughtful manner. Emily Ann went straight to one of the big chairs, climbed up and settled down with her chin resting on the arm.
A closed door flanked each side of the bed. After freeing the windows, Bob walked over and opened the one nearer the fireplace: a large closet, with room for hanging clothes on one side and shelves on the other, holding a variety of household items: blankets, linens, cleaning supplies, light bulbs. I went around the bed and tried the other door. When I switched on the light I saw this was the bathroom—or rather Bathroom.
This must have been added some years after the cabin was built, which most likely had an outhouse in its early days. The room was the shape of a traditional lean-to addition, but much taller, and the high ceiling allowed for a row of clerestory windows above the roofline of the cabin itself. The toilet was in an alcove to my left, with a door leading to the outdoors beside it. An enormous old fashioned claw-footed tub on my right had a shower suspended over it. In front of me was a wall of glass that during the day would doubtless lend the impression one was bathing in the woods.
Overhead was a crystal chandelier, tinkling like a glass of iced tea in the faint breeze from the still-open front door. Its myriad of sparkling drops gleamed in the light of five clear bulbs, throwing shards of brightness around the room. Bob came up behind me and looked in, his gaze caught by the chandelier.
“Waterford,” I remarked. He looked startled.
“What?”
“It’s a Waterford chandelier,” I explained.
He looked at the chandelier. “Wow, you’re good. How many people could tell that by one look?”
“Probably a lot, but don’t be too impressed. Kay sold it to Ambrose just after I moved back to Willow Falls. I never knew what he did with it, though.”
His smile turned into a laugh. “Louisa, I love your honesty.”
My smile faded, and he quickly sobered. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”
I shook my head once. “There’s so much you don’t know about me—”
One arm came around my shoulders in a quick hug, then he gave me a little shake. “Louisa,” he said sternly, “we’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks. Of course there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”
“And what you do know is awful.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know anything that’s awful about you.”
I felt the bridge of my nose prickle with tears that wanted to be shed. “The idiotic way my husband died—”
“But that wasn’t you, that was his idiocy. And while I'd like to claim you know everything about me since I narrated what felt like my whole life story this afternoon, probably still one or two events remain that you haven’t heard about. I admit I can't think of anything quite so spectacular as what Kerry Sue described, but some of mine are fairly idiotic.
“Now, come on. Let’s close that front door that should have shrieked like a banshee when we opened it but didn’t. I'll make you some of my famous cocoa if we can find anything to make it with, or tea if not. And we’ll sit down and relax for the first time in, what is it, twenty-four hours? A week and a half? When did I walk into that grocery store anyway?”
He took my hand, led me back into the other room and over to the love seat. Gently he pushed me down onto it; it felt good to settle into the cushions. Jack immediately jumped up beside me. “Good boy,” Bob told him, “you keep Louisa company for me.” He gave Emily Ann’s head a quick stroke as he passed her. He closed the front door and moved over to the kitchen area.
This was tiny, with a small stove and refrigerator, a microwave, some open shelves on the wall. Dark brown tiles topped the counters, and under the window a single porcelain sink gleamed. I watched over the back of the love seat as Bob busied himself opening all the cabinets, the refrigerator and freezer. Mother Hubbard would have felt right at home—nothing to make cocoa, no tea, no coffee. However, a full bar was set up in an old dry sink under a window looking out to the side yard. Bob opened a bottle of pinot noir and poured generous amounts into two glasses.
“I wonder if I should drive back to that little town we passed,” he remarked as he set the glasses on the table in front of the couch. “I don’t know about you but I will need coffee in the morning, and the operative word here is need.”
He went to the fireplace and struck one of the matches from a box on the mantel. The paper and kindling laid under the logs crackled and lit.
“I doubt you’d find anything open this late,” I told him, looking at my watch. My internal clock had taken a vacation, it could have been anything from 6 p.m. to midnight, but my watch said it was 9:30. “Besides, look what happened the last time you went into a grocery store at night. That should put you off shopping forever, if the music in the Food Right hadn’t already done it.”
He grinned as he stood up, his face lit by the flames leaping around the log on the hearth. “I wonder where they get the stuff they play,” he remarked. “The first time I went in I swear I heard the theme from Jaws played as a tango.”
“My favorite was ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ done dance-mix style.”
He looked around the room, apparently for lamps. He turned on the one beside the chair where Emily Ann reposed, and another near the love seat. He went to the light switch by the door and switched off the overhead fixture. The room instantly became a cozy nest.
“You’re right though,” he said, returning to where I was sitting. “I may never go into a store again. I'll have to figure out how to buy groceries on the Internet. Jack, get down now,” he added, and with a reproachful look Jack hopped off the couch. Bob took his place beside me. “Good boy.” He reached down and gave Jack a scratch on the chest before picking up the two glasses of wine and handing one to me. “Here you go. I doubt if it will hold a candle to my cocoa, but it no doubt is fine in its own way. What should we drink to?”
“I don’t know…world peace and dry clothing,” I chose at random. We touched the rims of our glasses together and a merry crystalline note chimed out.
The wine was indeed fine, probably the best I'd ever tasted. Ambrose obviously didn’t search out the best three dollar merlots that money can buy. I could feel dark red warmth trickling down my throat and spreading to my arms and legs and face. I sank against the back of the couch and took another sip.
“I'm bushed,” Bob sighed, leaning back as well and twisting his wineglass in his fingers. Shots of ruby light glinted in the crystal. “For some reason it's hard to relax when you’re tied to a chair. I didn’t intend to fall asleep in the barn. I sat down to rest and the next thing I knew Jack was giving my face a bath.”
“You should go to bed,” I told him. He nodded.
“In a bit. I'm tired but I'm so wired I doubt if I'd go to sleep.”
“What was it like being kidnapped?”
He looked at me and frowned. “You know, I keep asking myself why I didn’t just refuse to go with her when she accosted me in the store. It's unlikely she would have shot me in public, in a grocery store of all places. If it had been Walsh I would have tried to resist. It's hard to explain. She looked desperate. Miserable. This sounds stupid but in a way I wanted to help her out. Or maybe I thought someone who looked that desperate really might shoot me, I don’t know.” He shook his head.
“You have fine gentlemanly instincts,” I told him. “Look how nice you were to that crazy woman who tried to steal your car a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yeah, but she had a very handsome dog with her. I can never resist a handsome dog.” He sipped some more wine. “One thing about last night…”
“Yes?”
“It didn’t seem—planned.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had rope to tie me up, but a hotel room is an odd place to take someone you’ve kidnapped. What if I'd done a lot of yelling and people in the adjoining rooms heard? And wouldn’t you expect some kind of torture to go along with kidnapping and interrogation?”
I gave a little shudder. “Ig, don’t even say that. Think of all the kidnapping stories where they mail off some body part if the ransom isn’t paid.”
“I admit I'm pretty attached to all my parts. Anyway, if not torture, at least some kind of pressure. All she did was keep asking me where the tape was, and I kept refusing to tell her. Ransom didn’t come into the picture at all.”
“It does sound like an awfully genteel kidnapping,” I said. “I wonder if Ambrose is right, and she and Carl are working at cross purposes.”
“Could be, but I'm damned if I know what those purposes could be,” he said. “I'm convinced Walsh wants to remove me as a threat to his prosperous lifestyle, but what’s her story?”
“I hate not knowing stuff, or at least not having a way to find out.”
“I know. Is she an accomplice? Maybe she was an accomplice and he double crossed her. Or vice versa.”
“If I had been his accomplice, I'd be looking for something to protect me from becoming his next victim,” I said.
“Good point. Ian’s stepfather has not exhibited a lot of—what was it?—fine gentlemanly instincts.” He took another sip of wine, then set the glass down. A big yawn forced its way out of his mouth. He looked exhausted. I set down my glass beside his.
“You’re tired, you need to get some sleep,” I repeated.
“First things first, though,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my temple, my forehead, then zoned in on my mouth. He tasted like very good wine. I could feel myself start to react very much as I had to the wine, a gentle warmth flowing down all my limbs, a buzz in my head. I hadn’t had a kiss like this in a very long time.
Hell, I hadn’t had a kiss like this one ever.
I discovered my arms had encircled him, and we were leaning into each other. After a long, long time we paused for air. “Louisa,” he murmured, coming in for another kiss. One of the voices in my head asked me if I knew what I was doing, if I was ready for this, and did I remember I was in a cabin in the woods with only one bed, but I could barely hear it over the rushing of blood in my ears.