The Rainy Season Page 20

  Her heart pounding, she walked straight to the trunk and reached for the dusty lid, hesitating only a moment before lifting it back. There were scattered books lying atop heavy tapestry material. With her free hand she shifted the books aside and lifted a folded section of tapestry, exposing a small leather drawstring bag. She put her hand lightly on the soft leather of the bag, and the sound roundabout her grew distinct and solid, like a radio coming suddenly into tune—a girl’s laughter, the horse’s hooves pounding and pounding, the rain beating down. She felt with her fingers that a single hard object lay inside. She picked the bag up and dropped the trunk lid shut.

  Out of the corner of her eye now she saw movement in the shadowy corner opposite her, although when she turned her head to look, whatever had been there was already fading from view. She turned her eyes partly away, and it sprang into clear focus again. Several candles seemed to burn there in the darkness, the flames hovering in air, wreathing a pool of darkness. Something floated in that darkness, illuminated by the candle flames, which cast a flickering light across what appeared to be a small bed. She concentrated on it, peered at it, made out a stone wall behind the bed. The bed itself was covered in white linen, cobwebby, misty like smoke. Someone lay in the bed now, a pale figure, staring upward, thin, sickly—a girl, her eyes focused on something far away. It was raining in her world, and she was dreaming of riding horses. Betsy could smell musty stone and wax from the burning candles. …

  Suddenly anxious to get out of the tower, she put the bag from the trunk into her book bag and closed the lid over her inkwell. “Good-bye,” she whispered, and without looking back she headed quickly downstairs, realizing in a small panic that she had no real idea how much time had passed since she had gone upstairs. The tower was silent now—no rain, no whispering, just the sound of her own footsteps in the silent afternoon. Without lingering, she descended the last flight and crossed the floor. She turned the knob as she pushed on the door panel, but the door wouldn’t budge. It rattled in its frame, but something held it. She pushed harder, leaning into it, and then realized with a shock of horror that the door was simply locked from the outside.

  She turned hastily toward the window, biting her lip. Climbing out the window couldn’t be any harder than climbing down the tree. …

  Then she saw something that made her stand still—something that lay on the floor in the shadows under the stairs, something that hadn’t been there before. It was bones. Human bones. She made out the ivory curve of the skull, its eye sockets empty and dark, a couple of still-attached teeth. For a moment she stood staring at it, aware that her ears needed to pop, as if she were descending a mountain road or were at the bottom of a deep pool. She heard a ringing in them, too, and the air was heavy, like right before a summer thunderstorm. There was something else—a misty presence, like flour dust floating in dim light. She stared in fear and fascination, seeing in it the shape of a face slowly coming into focus—the shadow of high cheekbones, the line of a mouth.

  There was the sound of what might have been bones shifting and settling, and the ghostly face wavered, its features sharpening. She felt heavy, weighted down by the tower above her, and her book bag pulled at her hand as if it were full of rocks. What had happened upstairs was happening again, only this time the face that appeared was a boy’s face. She heard the sound of weeping, of a low moan, and she screamed, unable to stop herself, and ran across the few feet to the window, slinging her book bag around her neck and pushing hard on the window frame.

  She saw a latch in the center of the frame, and she twisted it open and pushed again, and the window pushed upward a couple of inches and jammed tight. She glanced behind her, saw the same misty whiteness hovering in the center of the room like an illuminated cob-web. She slipped her fingers under the low edge of the frame and wiggled it farther up, trying to keep the loose-fitting window from jamming shut again. She reached through the opening, wide enough now, and pushed flowerpots aside on the narrow shelf outside, then slid through the open window sideways, the strap of her book bag catching on something and nearly choking her. She reached blindly for the ground with her foot, but couldn’t find it, and just when she was simply about to push herself out and fall, she felt someone’s hands on her legs, and she froze there, halfway out the window.

  39

  ELIZABETH GOT OUT of the car, pushed the lock button on her key chain, and strolled down the road, hidden by foliage and by the steep bank of the roadside hill, until she came to the driveway, where she stopped just for a moment before hurrying across the drive and cutting up along the fenced edge of the property. She glanced at the side porch and the west-facing windows but saw no one, but she didn’t slow down until she was hidden from view by the garage. Nobody hollered or came outside, which Phil surely would do if he saw her or anyone else sneaking around now. If she were lucky, Phil would be inside showering off the dirt from all the digging.

  She went on, between the tower and the fence, until she could quite clearly see the digging that had gone on by the well—fresh dirt thrown all over the ankle-high grass, and a big hole that they had only partly filled back in. She looked around, thinking things through. There was always the tower to consider, although going into it now would mean walking out into clear view and boldly opening the door, which might be a mistake. If Phil simply spotted her here by the well, she could turn on the girlish charm and distract him, but there would be no way to lie her way out of it if Phil caught her in the act of breaking and entering. That would cost her everything. She stepped into the shadow of the rickety little shed, leaned out into the open, and darted a glance around the corner of the tower, calculating her chances of trying the door unseen. Immediately she saw that the door was locked. She stepped quickly back out of sight. It hadn’t been locked the other night: she had made a particular point of checking.

  She looked more carefully at the dug-up place now, and right away she found splinters of ancient wood on the ground near the hole, so rotted that she could rub them to fragments with her fingers. She pushed the dirt around on the surface, picked up a double handful, and shook it in her hands, loosening the clods. She dropped it and picked up another handful, sorting through it and almost at once finding what looked like a large coin wedged into a piece of red clay.

  Holding onto the dirt that encrusted it in case the coin itself was one of Appleton’s trinkets, she ducked back into the shadow of the garden shed again and carefully broke the dirt away, then clamped it to the ground with the toe of her shoe and scraped the coin clean with a twig. It didn’t appear to be a trinket, or at least it wasn’t like any of the trinkets she’d seen. Still, it was best to be careful. After kneeling in order to steady herself, she picked the coin up between her thumb and forefinger. There was nothing—no displacement, no confusion of memory. She took it in her palm and held it tightly. Nothing. It was simply a coin, very old. She wasn’t a coin collector, but ten years in the antiques business had taught her a thing or two, and she studied it carefully now, polishing it with her thumb and fingers. This was about the size of a half-dollar, with a crudely stamped figure like something on a heraldic shield. There was a cross in the center and what was clearly a rampant lion above it, facing to the left. Below sat something that might have been a cat, beneath which were Latin letters or words. She could make out IPPVS DGLS, or something like that. She was certain it was a Spanish doubloon, not terribly valuable, but evidence that the digging hadn’t been for the purpose of fooling anyone—it hadn’t been a ruse—unless, of course, they had planted the coin in order to convince more thoroughly anyone who came snooping around.

  Elizabeth heard a sudden scuffling sound from inside the tower now, and she bolted for the fence, hiding herself. Abruptly there was the sound of a girl’s scream. Smiling now, she waited there safely hidden, watching from behind the latticework wall of the garden shed to see what would happen next.

  40

  “EASY DOES IT,” Elizabeth said, helping Betsy down to the ground. S
he smiled in order to put the girl at her ease, but Betsy looked as if she’d had a sudden fright, which was interesting, to say the least. Betsy glanced toward the house, probably looking for Phil, and appeared slightly relieved that he wasn’t in sight. Then, acting quite cool, she climbed back up onto the potting bench and pulled shut the window. Through the dirty glass, Elizabeth could make out nothing inside except the dark shadow of stairs leading upward, and what might be a ray of stray sunlight glowing on the wall beneath the stairs themselves. She should simply have put her head in through the window and looked around when she’d had a chance.

  “Were you trapped inside?” Elizabeth asked.

  Betsy shrugged. “I like going out windows,” she said, looking away toward the avocado grove.

  “Especially when the only door is locked?” Elizabeth widened her eyes, and Betsy smiled back now. “I think you were snooping,” Elizabeth said.

  “I wasn’t snooping.”

  “I was just kidding. Did you ever read any Nancy Drew? Not the old ones, but the new ones?”

  Betsy nodded. “I like the old ones.”

  “I thought you were a reader! That’s what I meant by snooping—like a detective, I meant. I’m snooping, actually. I love snooping. I love finding things; don’t you? Look what I’ve found right here where someone’s been digging.” She held out her hand, showing Betsy the old coin, watching her eyes. Her interest in it was obvious, although almost at once she seemed to lose interest in it, or at least pretend to. Elizabeth closed her palm over it again. The girl seemed to realize then that her book bag was hanging partly open, and she slid it down her arm and grasped both cloth handles to keep it shut tight. The contents of the bag shifted, and Betsy put her palm against the front of it to steady it.

  “Is there a guinea pig inside there?” Elizabeth asked.

  Betsy shook her head. “Just stuff.”

  “Just stuff? Did you find anything good inside the tower? Any good stuff?”

  “There’s mostly books,” Betsy said.

  “Old books?”

  “Yes. In boxes. That’s why I went inside. To look around.”

  “I see. And when you went in, you climbed through the window because the door was locked?”

  Betsy shook her head again, then changed her mind and nodded.

  “The door was locked?”

  “I don’t know,” Betsy said. “It was fun to use the window.”

  “It is, isn’t it? It’s always more fun to have a secret way in and out.”

  Betsy nodded.

  “Well, what your Uncle Phil doesn’t know won’t hurt him, I guess. I won’t say anything to him, so you don’t have to worry. He’s inside the house right now, by the way. I told him I was coming out here to look around. I wonder why he was digging out here.”

  “I wonder, too.” She looked at the hole and shrugged.

  Elizabeth heard, right then, the sound of a window sliding shut, and she glanced at the second story of the house, where she saw movement beyond the lace curtains of the corner room, as if someone who had been watching at the window had just then shut the window and slipped out of sight.

  “You didn’t see anyone digging while you were inside the tower? You might have seen something through the window.”

  “I was only looking at books.”

  “It’s a big hole that he’s dug—big enough to hide a treasure. I guess it was Phil who dug it.”

  “Uh-huh. I guess.”

  “So you didn’t see anything?”

  “No.”

  “And there was nothing but books in the tower?”

  Betsy nodded.

  “When you climbed in through the window did you see that someone had dug a big hole here? You must be a good enough detective to have noticed a bunch of loose dirt like this.” She gestured at the digging.

  Betsy pursed her lips and shook her head again.

  Elizabeth winked at her. The little liar. She was holding tough. Clearly she’d had some practice at deception. “So what’s in the bag, then, kiddo?”

  “Nothing,” Betsy said. She still held tightly to it, and Elizabeth wondered for a moment whether she shouldn’t just snatch it out of the girl’s hands and have a look inside. “Just some things of mine.” She reached into it now and pulled out a Piglet doll, which she showed to Elizabeth. Then she dropped it back into the bag, closing the bag after it. Clearly she was lying about it all. Something was happening here: the locked tower door, the digging, the sneaking around. Betsy knew something, the little sneak. Maybe a twenty-dollar bill would loosen her tongue. …

  But a screen door banged shut just then, and Phil stepped down into the yard. Elizabeth waved, putting on a big smile for him, and in that moment Betsy ran toward the porch without a word, straight past her uncle and into the house. Phil turned toward Betsy as if he would slow her down, and Elizabeth glanced again at the corner room on the second floor, certain once again that someone was standing at the window watching. She slipped the coin into her jeans pocket and walked out to meet Phil on the lawn.

  41

  THE THING THAT struck Mrs. Darwin the most about southern California was the terrible change that had taken place since she had lived there in the 1950s. The close press of speeding traffic, the housing projects in the foothills, the shabby strip malls and industrial parks, all of it had pretty much killed any charm that the place might once have had. Of course Texas, and especially Austin, had had its share of growth and headaches, but somehow Texas never put on airs. Southern California was the land of vanity, and it seemed to her that Phil Ainsworth typified the self-centeredness and self-righteousness of the place. Certainly it was nowhere for a sensitive child like Betsy to grow up.

  She honked the horn long and hard at a car that cut her off, and then opened another package of Fig Newtons, watching the street signs for Chapman Avenue. She pulled into the exit lane finally, got off the freeway, and swung into the parking lot of a nondescript shopping center where she took out a street map with a route already marked out with a highlighter. Sitting in the quiet car, she felt as if she were at a true crossroads, and she was struck with a sudden sense of disconnectedness. The preparations she had made in Austin had separated her from her past, as had the road miles she had put on the car over the last couple of days, revisiting old haunts in the southwest, recalling the ghosts of old memories, putting them to rest at last.

  But her future wasn’t apparent to her yet, and there was a certain thrill in that for a woman her age. Just a few weeks ago the canvas of her life had been largely painted in, and that had begun to look dismal to her. The only hope she had was Betsy. The only thing that recommended the future was Betsy. Then Phil Ainsworth had come along and thrown dirt on everything. And now Marianne’s death was all for nothing, and Betsy was taken from her. That was the real irony of the thing: Phil Ainsworth had invalidated his own sister’s death. “I hope he’s satisfied,” she muttered, but of course he couldn’t be. He had no idea what he’d done. She would have to teach him.

  She saw that there was a gas station on the corner, and she drove up to one of the self-serve pumps now, got out of the car, and went inside to pay the cashier for ten dollars’ worth of gas. On her way out she put a quarter in the pay phone, called Phil’s number, waited until he answered, and then hung up. Chuckling, she went out to pump her own gas, something she had started doing when she’d left Austin, as a lesson in self-sufficiency. A man who had been sitting outside the minimart stood up and walked toward her. She could tell from his shaggy hair and sunburn that he was homeless, and she considered what she would say to him when he asked for money. And speaking of self-sufficiency, a small lecture on that subject wouldn’t hurt him at all. She smiled at him graciously, seeing then that he carried a wad of newspaper and a spray bottle of Windex.

  “Wash your windows,” he mumbled.

  “By all means,” she said. The windshield was a mess from the open road, and she watched as he dabbed at the dried bugs with the newspaper. “
Let the Windex sit for a moment,” she said. “Wait till it softens the dirt, then rub at it.”

  He worked away as if he hadn’t heard her, which burned her up just a little bit. Clearly this wasn’t the first time he had failed to take good advice. When he was finished, the windshield was still smeared and dirty, especially around the perimeter. “Give it one more try,” she told him evenly. “Get along the edge there.”

  He went at it again, using up his entire stock of newspaper and an inch or so out of the bottle by the time he was done with the entire car. He stood waiting then. “Did you want something more?” she asked.

  “I washed your windows,” he said to her, gesturing at her now, as if he were losing patience.

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “Oh, did you want money? Because really, if that’s what you wanted, you should have said something. The gas station supplies a bucket and squeegee, and I had intended on washing my own windows. I do for myself.”

  He stared at her in silence for a moment, and she wondered suddenly if he might be on the edge of violence. The look of passive ignorance on his face might be the result of some kind of numbing psychosis. “In fact I will pay you,” she said to him, after giving him time to think about what he had learned. “But next time, be more forthright with a customer. I realize that you can’t do a lot with your dress or personal habits, but you can learn to speak up and to make it clear exactly what you’re selling. I’m happy when you homeless people are willing to work for a living, and I honestly wish you all the success you deserve. I have money in the car here.” She stepped around to the driver’s side and climbed in, pushing the button to lower the passenger-side window and pulling two quarters out of the change tray beneath the radio. She handed him the quarters. He looked at them, spit on her windshield, dropped the quarters on the ground, and dumped the dirty newspaper in through the open window.