Lasher, Page 2

  Lamps burned dim on either side of the big keyhole doorway. The porch lay in darkness, its rocking chairs barely visible, painted black as they were to match the shutters. The garden seemed to gather round and press in.

  The house itself looked to her as it always had, beautiful, mysterious, and inviting, though she had to admit in her heart of hearts she had liked it better when it was a spidery ruin, before Michael came with his hammer and nails. She had liked it when Aunt Deirdre sat forever on the side porch in a rocker, and the vines threatened to swallow the whole place.

  Of course Michael saved it, but oh, if only she'd gotten into it once while it was still ruined. She'd known all about that body they found in the attic. She'd heard her mother and Aunt Gifford arguing about it for years and years. Mona's mother had been only thirteen when Mona was born, and Gifford had been there from the time of Mona's earliest memories.

  In fact there had actually been a time when Mona wasn't sure which one was her mother--Gifford or Alicia. And then there had been Ancient Evelyn always holding Mona on her lap, and even though Ancient Evelyn wouldn't talk very much she still sang those old melancholy songs. Gifford had seemed the logical choice for a mother, because Alicia by that time was already a prodigious drunk, but Mona had it right and had for years. Mona was the woman of the house at Amelia Street.

  They'd talked a lot in those days about that body upstairs. They'd talked about Cousin Deirdre, the heiress, who wasted away in her catatonia. They'd talked about all the mysteries of First Street.

  The first time Mona had ever come into First Street--right before Rowan's marriage to Michael--she had fancied she could smell that body still. She'd wanted to go up and lay her hands on the spot. Michael Curry had been restoring the house, and workmen were up there painting away. Aunt Gifford had said for Mona to "Stay put!" and given her a stern look every time Mona tried to wander.

  It had been a miracle to watch Michael Curry's work. Mona dreamed such a thing would someday happen to the house on St. Charles and Amelia.

  Well, Mona would get to that third-floor room now. And thanks to the history she knew who the dead man had been, a young investigator from the Talamasca called Stuart Townsend. Still wasn't clear who had poisoned the man. But Mona's bet was it had been her Uncle Cortland, who really wasn't her uncle at all, but actually her great-great-grandfather, which was really one of the most fun puzzles in the family history to figure out.

  Smells. She wanted to investigate that other smell--the scent that lingered in the hallway and the living room of First Street. Nothing to do with a dead body, that one. The smell that had come with disaster at Christmas. The smell which no one else could smell, it seemed, unless Aunt Gifford had been lying when Mona asked her.

  Aunt Gifford did that. She wouldn't admit to "seeing things" or picking up strange scents. "I don't smell anything!" she'd said with annoyance. Well, maybe that was true. Mayfairs could read other people's minds a lot of the time, but they were good at blocking out each other.

  Mona wanted to touch everything. She wanted to look for the Victrola. She did not care about the pearls. She wanted the Victrola. And she wanted to know THE BIG FAMILY SECRET--what had happened to Rowan Mayfair on Christmas Day. Why had Rowan left her new husband, Michael? And why had they found him drowned in the ice-cold swimming pool? Just nearly dead. Everybody had thought he was going to die after that, except Mona.

  Of course Mona could conjecture what happened like everyone else. But she wanted more than that. She wanted the Michael Curry version. And to date, there was no such version. If he'd told anyone what happened on Christmas Day, it was his friend Aaron Lightner, from the Talamasca, who would not tell anyone else. But people felt too sorry for Michael to press it. They'd thought he was going to die from what happened to him.

  Mona had managed to get into his room in Intensive Care on Christmas Night and hold his hand. He wasn't going to die. There was hurt to his heart, yes, because he'd stopped breathing for a long time in the cold water, and he had to rest to heal that hurt, but he was nowhere near dying, she knew that as soon as she felt his pulse. And touching him had been rather like touching a Mayfair. He had something extra to him which Mayfairs always had. He could see ghosts, she knew. The History of the Mayfair Witches had not included him and Rowan, but she knew. She wondered if he'd tell the truth about it. Fact, she'd even heard some maddening whispers to the effect that he had.

  Oh, so much to learn, so much to uncover. And being thirteen was kind of like a bad joke on her. She was no more thirteen than Joan of Arc had ever been thirteen, the way she saw it. Or Catherine of Siena. Of course they were saints but only by a hair. They were almost witches.

  And what about the Children's Crusade? If Mona had been there, they would have gotten back the Holy Land, she figured. What if she started a nationwide revolt of genius thirteen-year-olds right now--demand for the power to vote based on intelligence, a driver's license as soon as you could qualify and see over the dashboard. Well, a lot of this would have to wait.

  The point was, she'd known tonight as they walked back from the Comus parade that Michael was quite strong enough to go to bed with her, if only she could get him to do it, which was not going to be an easy thing.

  Men Michael's age had the best combination of conscience and self-control. An old man, like her Great-uncle Randall, that had been easy, and young boys, like her cousin David, were nothing at all.

  But a thirteen-year-old going after Michael Curry? It was like scaling Everest, Mona thought with a smile. I'm going to do it if it kills me. And maybe then, when she had him, she'd know what he knew about Rowan, why Rowan and he had fought on Christmas Day, and why Rowan had disappeared. After all, this wasn't really a betrayal of Rowan. Rowan had gone off with someone, that was almost for sure, and everybody in the family, whether they would talk about it or not, was terrified for Rowan.

  It wasn't like Rowan was dead; it was like she'd gone off and left the barn door open. And here was Mona coming along, mad for Michael Curry, this big woolly mammoth of a man.

  Mona stared up at the huge keyhole doorway for one moment, thinking of all the pictures she'd seen of family members in that doorway, over the years. Great-oncle Julien's portrait still hung at Amelia Street, though Mona's mother had to take it down every time Aunt Gifford came, even though it was a dreadful insult to Ancient Evelyn. Ancient Evelyn rarely said a word--only drawn out of her reverie by her terrible worry for Mona and Mona's mother, that Alicia was really dying finally from the drink, and Patrick was so far gone he didn't know for sure who he even was.

  Staring at the keyhole doorway, Mona felt almost as if she could see Oncle Julien now with his white hair and blue eyes. And to think he had once danced up there with Ancient Evelyn. The Talamasca hadn't known about that. The history had passed over Ancient Evelyn and her granddaughters Gifford and Alicia, and Alicia's only child, Mona.

  But this was a game she was playing, making visions. Oncle Julien wasn't in the door. Had to be careful. Those visions were not the real thing. But the real thing was coming.

  Mona walked along the flagstone path to the side of the house, and then back to the flags, past the side porch where Aunt Deirdre had sat in her rocker for so many years. Poor Aunt Deirdre. Mona had seen her from the fence many a time, but she'd never managed to get inside the gate. And now to know the awful story of the way they'd drugged her.

  The porch was all clean and pretty these days, with no screen on it anymore, though Uncle Michael had put back Deirdre's rocking chair and did use it, as if he had become as crazy as she had been, sitting there for hours in the cold. The windows to the living room were hung with lace curtains and fancy silk drapes. Ah, such riches.

  And here, where the path turned and widened, this was where Aunt Antha had fallen and died, years and years ago, as doomed a witch as her daughter, Deirdre, would become, Antha's skull broken and blood flowing out of her head and her heart.

  No one was here now to stop Mona from dropping down
to her knees and laying her hands on the very stones. For one flashing instant, she thought she saw Antha, a girl of eighteen, with big dead eyes, and an emerald necklace tangled with blood and hair.

  But again, this was making pictures. You couldn't be sure they were any more than imagination, especially when you'd heard the stories all your life as Mona had, and dreamed so many strange dreams. Gifford sobbing at the kitchen table at Amelia Street. "That house is evil, evil, I tell you. Don't let Mona go up there."

  "Oh, nonsense, Gifford, she wants to be the flower girl in Rowan Mayfair's wedding. It's an honor."

  It certainly had been an honor. The greatest family wedding ever. And Mona had loved it. If it hadn't been for Aunt Gifford watching her, Mona would have made a sneaky search of the whole First Street house that very afternoon, while everyone else swilled champagne and talked about the wholesome side of things, and speculated about Mr. Lightner, who had not yet revealed his history to them.

  But Mona would not have been in the wedding at all if Ancient Evelyn had not risen from her chair to overrule Gifford. "Let the child walk up the aisle," she had said in her dry whisper. She was ninety-one years old now. And the great virtue of almost never speaking was that when Ancient Evelyn did, everybody stopped to listen. If she wasn't mumbling, that is.

  There were times when Mona hated Aunt Gifford for her fears and her worry, the constant look of dread on her face. But nobody could really hate Aunt Gifford. She was too good to everybody around her, especially to her sister, Alicia, Mona's mother, whom everyone regarded as hopeless now that she'd been hospitalized three times for her drinking and it hadn't done any good. And every Sunday without fail, Gifford came to Amelia Street, to clean up a bit, sweep the walk, and sit with Ancient Evelyn. She brought dresses for Mona, who hated to go shopping.

  "You know you ought to dress more like a teenager these days," Gifford had volunteered only a few weeks ago.

  "I like my little-girl dresses, thanks," said Mona, "they're my disguise. Besides if you ask me, most teenagers look tacky. I wouldn't mind looking corporate, but I'm a bit short for that."

  "Well, your bra cup is giving you away! It's hard to find you sweet cotton frocks with enough room in them, you know."

  "One minute you want me to grow up; the next minute you want me to behave. What am I to you, a little girl or a sociological problem? I don't like to conform. Aunt Gif, did it ever occur to you that conformity can be destructive? Take a look at men today on the news. Never in history have all the men in a nation's capital dressed exactly alike. Ties, shirts, coats of gray. It's appalling."

  "Responsibility, that's what I'm talking about. To dress your age and behave your age. You don't do either, and we're talking about two contrary directions of course. The Whore of Babylon with a ribbon in her hair just isn't your garden-variety teenage experience."

  Then Gifford had stopped, shocked that she'd said that word, whore, her cheeks flaming, and her hands clasped, her bobbed black hair falling down around her face. "Oh, Mona, darling, I love you."

  "I know that, Aunt Gif, but please for the love of God and all we hold sacred, never refer to me as garden-variety anything, ever again!"

  Mona knelt on the flagstones for a long time, until the cold started to bother her knees.

  "Poor Antha," Mona whispered. She stood up, and once again smoothed her pink dress. She brushed her hair back off her shoulders, and made sure that her satin bow was still properly pinned to the back of her head. Uncle Michael loved her satin bow, he had told her that.

  "As long as Mona has her bow," he'd said this evening, on the way to see Comus, "everything is going to be all right."

  "I turned thirteen in November," she'd told him in a whisper, drawing near to hold his hand. "They're telling me to turn in my ribbon."

  "You? Thirteen?" His eyes had moved over her, lingering just for a split second on her breasts, and then he had actually blushed. "Well, Mona, I didn't realize. But no, don't you dare stop wearing that ribbon. I see that red hair and the ribbon in my dreams."

  Of course he meant all this poetically and playfully. He was an innocent and wholesome man, just really nice. Anyone could see that. But then again, there had been a bit of blush to his cheeks, hadn't there? After all, there were some men his age who did see a thirteen-year-old with large breasts as just one species of uninteresting baby, but Michael didn't happen to be one of those.

  Well, she'd think a little bit more about strategy when she got inside the house, and close to him. For now, she wanted to walk around the pool. She went up the steps and out along the broad flagstone terrace. The lights were on beneath the surface of the water, making it a shining blue, and a faint bit of steam rose from the surface, though why it was heated, Mona didn't know. Michael wouldn't swim in it ever again. He'd said so. Well, Come St. Patrick's Day, whatever the temperature, there would probably be a hundred Mayfair kids in there. So best to leave the heat on.

  She followed the terrace to the far end, near the cabana, where they'd found the blood in the snow, which meant that a fight had taken place. All clean now and swept, with only a little sprinkling of leaves. The garden was still down a bit from the snows of this mad winter, so unusual for New Orleans, but due to the warmth of the last week, the four-o'clocks had come back and she could smell them, and see their tiny little blooms in the dark. Hard to imagine all this covered with snow and blood, and Michael Curry floating under the surface of the water, face bleeding and bruised, heart stopped.

  Then another scent caught her--that same strange smell she'd picked up earlier in the hallway of the house and in the front parlor where the Chinese rug used to be. It was faint but it was here all right. When she drew near the balustrade she smelled it. All mingled with the cold four-o'clocks. A very seductive smell. Sort of, well, delicious, she thought. Like caramel or butterscotch could be delicious, only it wasn't a food smell.

  A little rage kindled in her suddenly for whoever had hurt Michael Curry. She'd liked him from the moment she laid eyes on him. She'd liked Rowan Mayfair too. She'd longed for moments alone with them to ask them things and tell them things, and especially to ask them to give her the Victrola, if they could find it. But those opportunities had never come.

  She knelt down on the flags now as she had done before. She touched the cold stone that hurt her bare knees. The smell was here all right. But she saw nothing. She looked up at the dark servants' porch of the main house. Not a light anywhere. Then she looked beyond the iron fence to the carriage house behind Deirdre's oak.

  One light. That meant Henri was still awake. Well, what about it? She could handle Henri. She had figured out tonight at the supper after Comus that Henri was already scared of this house, and didn't like working in it, and probably wouldn't stay long. He couldn't quite figure how to make Michael happy, Michael who kept saying, "I'm what's called a high prole, Henri. If you fix red beans and rice, I'll be fine."

  A high prole. Mona had gone up to Uncle Michael after supper, just as he was trying to get away from everyone and take his nightly constitutional, as he called it, and said, "What the hell is a high prole, Uncle Michael?"

  "Such language," he'd whispered with mock surprise. Then before he could stop himself, he'd stroked the ribbon in her hair.

  "Oh, sorry," she'd said, "but for an uptown girl, it's sort of, you know, de rigueur to have a large vocabulary."

  He'd laughed, a little fascinated maybe. "A high prole is a person who doesn't have to worry about making the middle class happy," he said. "Would an uptown girl understand that?"

  "Sure would. It's extremely logical, what you're saying, and I want you to know I loathe conformity in any form."

  Again his gentle beguiling laughter.

  "How did you get to be a high prole?" She'd pushed it. "Where do I go to sign on?"

  "You can't sign on, Mona," he'd answered. "A high prole is born a prole. He is a fire fighter's son who has made plenty of money. A high prole can mow his own grass any time he likes. He can was
h his own car. Or he can drive a van when everybody keeps telling him he ought to drive a Mercedes. A high prole is a free man." What a smile he had given her. Of course he was laughing at himself a little, in a weary sort of way. But he liked to look at her, that she could see. Yes, indeed, he did like to look at her. Only some weariness and some sense of propriety held him in check.

  "Sounds good to me," she'd said. "Do you take off your shirt when you mow the grass?"

  "How old are you, Mona?" he'd asked her playfully, cocking his head to one side. But the eyes were completely innocent.

  "I told you, thirteen," she'd answered. She'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly on the cheek, and there had come that blush again. Yes, he saw her, saw her breasts and the contour of her waist and hips under the loose pink cotton dress. Yet he'd seemed moved by her show of affection, an emotion quite entirely separate. His eyes had glassed over for a minute, and then he'd said he had to go walk outside. He'd said something about Mardi Gras Night, about passing this house once when he'd been a boy, on Mardi Gras Night, when they'd been on their way to see Comus.

  No, nothing really wrong with his heart now at all, except that the doctors kept scaring him, and giving him much too much medicine, though he did now and then have those little pains, he'd told Ryan, which reminded him of what he could and couldn't do. Well, Mona would find out what he could or couldn't do.

  She stood by the pool for a long moment, thinking of all the bits and pieces of the story--Rowan run off, some kind of miscarriage in the front hall, blood everywhere, and Michael bruised and knocked unconscious in the pool. Could the miscarriage account for the smell? She'd asked Pierce earlier if he could smell it. No. She'd asked Bea. No. She'd asked Ryan. Of course not. Stop going around looking for mysterious things! She thought of Aunt Gifford's drawn face as she stood in the hospital corridor on Christmas Night, when they'd thought Michael was dying, and the way she had looked at Uncle Ryan.