Read Online Ashes to Ashes by Lillian Stewart Carl - Free Book Online Page A

The wind, if cold, was wonderfully fresh. It found and yanked free several locks of her hair, which began waving around her face like sea anemones in a current. She pulled the strands aside and saw Steve standing beside the Volvo, his hand on the door as if he’d just closed it. “Hi!” she said.
    He shot a furtive look at her and scurried away, in his black garments and Walkman appearing unappetizingly like a cockroach.
    Mustn’t judge him on how he dresses, she chided herself. Phil’s right— a kid’s clothing is his admission into a circle of friends. Rebecca herself had suffered agonies wearing a cousin’s hand-me-down bell-bottoms when all the other girls were wearing smart narrow-legged jeans. That was when she’d learned how to sew, even though she had to take a part-time job after school to buy the sewing machine.
    She opened the trunk of her car and extricated the typewriter. The gale made her wool sweater feel like chiffon, but it was preferable to the sneaky little drafts in the upper room. She turned to see Eric striding across the gravel. “Let me help you!” He slammed the trunk, gave her her keys, took the typewriter, and escorted her into the lee of the building.
    Very smooth, she thought; in taking the typewriter he brushed her fingertips so lightly with his own a pleasant tremor rippled up her arm.
    Eric set the typewriter inside the door and pointed toward the stone fretwork structure across the lawn. “Did you know that that’s the mausoleum where the Forbeses are buried?”
    “Here? On the grounds?” Again she crossed her arms and hugged.
    “John thought he was too good to mingle with the peasantry in the Putnam cemetery, I suppose. At any rate, he had a vault dug to accomodate his wife. Do you know about her? Very unfortunate.” Eric’s jaw twitched, as if he’d clenched his teeth.
    “Yes,” Rebecca murmured. She scuffed the gravel with her toe. These particular pebbles wouldn’t have been here then.
    “Later on John built the dovecote behind the vault, to camouflage it, perhaps. If he’d been at all a romantic soul, I’d say he was equating doves with the goddess of love— the usual Victorian sentimentality. But he probably just wanted an inexpensive source of fresh drumsticks.”
    Rebecca grinned. How gracefully he’d smoothed over his macabre revelation. “If John could stand having Queen Mary in his front hall, I guess he could stand burying his wife in his front yard. He became a recluse after she died, didn’t he?”
    Eric nodded, his eyes fixed on the structure that was Elspeth’s only memorial. As if to dramatize the scene a ray of sun peeked out and the stone sparkled. It must be Connecticut granite, Rebecca thought, like the house.
    “He lingered on another thirty years,” said Eric, “without speaking to anyone but James and the servants. I’d feel sorry for him, except… ”
    “He brought it on himself?”
    “Yes.” Eric made a precise about-face and offered Rebecca a grin of his own. Glancing at his watch, he said, “I have some business in Putnam this afternoon, but I should be finished by five. Would you like to have dinner with me before I go back to Columbus?”
    His unfortunately crowded teeth made his grin look like a cartoon wolf’s. Rebecca had to laugh. “I’d love to.”
    “Great. In Putnam most of the places are franchises or hole-in-the-wall diners suitable only for a truck driver’s stomach. Unless you’re a Big Mac freak I suggest Gaetano’s, a new Italian restaurant.”
    “Sounds much better than a Big Mac. I ate altogether too many of them when I was putting myself through school.”
    “So did I,” Eric confided. He pulled out his sunglasses, considered the sky, replaced them in his pocket. She half expected him to kiss her hand, but he only nudged her shoulder toward the door. “Go back inside before you get a chill. I’ll be here at five-thirty.”
    But the inside is as cold as the outside, she thought ruefully. I’ll have