CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 31

"Oh, wow. That's pathetic," Marilee said. She was eyeing the Christmas tree as Neal, on his knees, plugged in the lights. Only a few in the string actually winked on. "Can't we, like, have a real tree?" She looked from the little artificial pine to Brooke. "Like we did at home?" She gestured toward the fake tree with its sagging limbs. "I mean, look at it."

"It is sad," Brooke agreed and remembered the giant, festive firs they'd decorated in their home in Queen Anne. The tall trees had always been placed near the staircase so the highest branches could be reached from the upper landing and the star placed on the very top of the tree.

Marilee scoffed, "Mom, it's beyond sad. Way beyond."

"Okay, okay. I've heard enough about this from the both of you." Checking his watch, Neal said, "Maybe we can find a better one in a lot in Marwood. Maybe even at a discount, considering tomorrow's Christmas Eve. The next ferry leaves the island in twenty minutes. We can make it if we hurry!" He rolled to his feet and looked at his daughter. "You in?"

Marilee was still staring at the tired little tree. "Oh yeah, I'm in. I'm in big-time!"

Brooke held up one hand. "I've still got some chores here, you guys go."

"Really?" Neal said. "First you didn't want to come to the landing and now . . ."

"Come on, Dad!" Marilee was already stepping into her boots. "You said the ferry was gonna leave."

"Okay. Yeah. Let's go." But he sent one more I-don't-get-you look at Brooke.

He slid on his jacket again, Marilee her coat, and then they were off, dashing outside, where the ground was now covered with a thin layer of snow.

Brooke heard the CR-V's engine roar to life and checked the window, watching as Neal drove like a madman down the rutted drive, mud and water spraying from beneath the SUV's tires.

She checked her watch.

Neal and Marilee wouldn't be gone long—a twenty-minute ferry ride each way and an hour in town, a total of less than two hours—so she had to work fast.

This was her opportunity.

Enough time to search the house and make sure Gideon hadn't left her any more little surprises.

While Shep followed after her, she walked through the rooms on the first floor, her gaze scouring every inch of the cabin, every small crevice. She remembered those tiny cameras hidden throughout the house in Seattle, the little eyes that had silently watched and recorded her every move.

Could there be more here, sprinkled about the house, hidden in dark corners and tucked into unlikely niches?

She located a small flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer and jammed it into her pocket. In the upstairs hallway she drew down the ladder, then climbed into the attic.

"Déjà vu all over again," she told herself once she was in the cramped space and remembered her last foray into an attic, where she'd found all the spy equipment. Undeterred, she shone the tiny, bluish beam from the flashlight around the ancient joists and over the old, forgotten bins and crates. A few were broken, clothes and books and records from a previous era spilling out. Cobwebs glistened, and in one corner she discovered evidence of a rodent's nest, now abandoned. The layer of dust was disturbed of course; Neal had been rooting around up here, searching for the Christmas decorations. She spied candles and photographs, a broken desk chair and cracked ceramic lamps, pictures of relatives she couldn't remember and memorabilia from Nana's high school: diploma, cap and gown, and yearbook, all slowly disintegrating.

Her breath visible, Brooke riffled through the piles, scanned the floor and short walls, and studied the wide expanse where she had to crouch to inch forward. A small window was cut into the peak of the roofline and she checked, only to find it cracked, rain leaking inside, the wall beneath it soft where the water had penetrated and rotted the wood.

Worse yet, she discovered evidence of bat droppings along the wall and on the floor. "Great," she muttered as she searched an old file cabinet that held stacks of papers addressed to Mary Flannigan O'Hara. As if Nana would need the bank statements, letters, and reports any longer. Sooner rather than later she would have to clean this attic, as well as the basement.

Not today, she told herself. Definitely not today.

Something darted across her feet.

Brooke screamed. Dropped her flashlight. Scrabbled backward.

A mouse, disturbed and squeaking its surprise, scurried across the floor to duck into a knothole where the floorboards didn't quite meet.

"Crap!" Brooke's heart was beating wildly as she followed the little rodent with the beam from her small flashlight. She didn't see anything. Not even a pair of beady eyes reflecting in the harsh glow. Good. Nerves tight, she went back to work, crawling around the perimeter of the attic, searching for wires or cameras or microphones or transmitters or anything suspicious.

Nothing.

At least nothing that caught her eye in a first, quick appraisal.

Unless Neal already found the bugs when he was up here looking for the Christmas tree and lights.

Was that possible?

Would he?

"Don't even go there," she said, trying to tamp down her paranoia as time ticked by. Why would Gideon set up surveillance here, when he knew they rarely came to the island? It would have been a lot of work for very little if any reward.

She was jumping at shadows.

"Stop it!" she hissed so loudly that Shep, in the hallway below the open trapdoor, let out a worried "Woof."

"It's okay, boy," she called down to him, though of course it wasn't. It wasn't okay at all.

Yes, Gideon had been here. The bracelet was evidence enough of that. But most likely it was a one-time shot, a last-gasp effort to one-up her if and when she ever returned. She tried to force herself to relax.

It's over, she reminded herself as she gave another quick look at the belongings left and forgotten up here. She climbed down the ladder and pushed it back into the ceiling, the old springs groaning as the trapdoor snapped into place. She couldn't let Gideon's last desperate play get to her now. She refused to let his actions scrape her emotions raw. It was his final mind game and she wasn't going to play.

Still, she went outside, letting Shep explore the backyard while she hurried down the exterior stairwell to the basement, where a key was hidden in a rusting flowerpot. The door was heavy and swollen, but she shouldered it open and stepped into a space that was dank and musty. The light switch worked, though only one of two single bulbs gave off any illumination. She ran her flashlight's beam over shelves of gardening equipment, canning jars, old newspapers, and fishing gear. All the old possessions in the basement seemed as if they had been undisturbed for years. When she shone the light over the exposed beams of the ceiling and cracked cement of the walls, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just a lot of junk that needed to be cleared out.

Satisfied that nothing was out of place, she locked the basement door behind her again.

She'd been on a fool's errand.

Finding the bracelet had unnerved her, made her a little crazy.

Brushing the cobwebs from her hair and clothes, she decided to shower before Neal and Marilee returned. Quickly, she stripped off her dusty sweater and smudged jeans, her sweat-soaked bra and panties. The old pipes groaned in protest as she stepped under the spray that was little more than a fine mist but at least washed the perspiration, grit, and fear from her body. Pull it together, she told herself and suddenly craved a cigarette, though she had completely given up the habit.

Ignoring her sudden need for a shot of nicotine, she lathered and shampooed, closing her eyes as she rinsed the suds from her body and hair. Her tense muscles finally relaxed and as she twisted off the taps, she let out a long breath, then reached for a towel.

Just as she spied a little dark spot above the showerhead. Barely visible from her height. It was nothing of course, she told herself as she toweled off, but she didn't remember seeing it in years past. Don't go there, she told herself firmly. Do not! But she couldn't help her heightened sense of worry. After slipping on a clean bra and panties, she found the old stool they'd used years before when Marilee needed a step up to use the sink or toilet. She positioned the stool inside the tub and stepped up, balancing herself against the shower curtain rail. Then she reached up and poked a finger in the hole. Was there a bit of glass there? The eye of a minuscule camera?

"No," she whispered, her skin prickling. Maybe it was an old wasp's nest or a hole made by some kind of burrowing insect or . . . She stepped off the stool suddenly, hurried back to her bedroom to retrieve the flashlight, and was back on the stool in an instant. Under the flashlight's beam there was a reflection, some minute lens, smaller than a pea. "Shit!" she said, her pulse jumping as she realized whoever had set the little camera in place could watch her naked and wet, as he could watch Neal or Marilee if they used this shower.

Gideon.

It had to be Gideon.

"You son of a—ooh!" So furious she nearly lost her balance and fell off the stool. She grabbed the hook where she'd hung her towel just as she heard the sound of an engine.

Neal and Marilee were returning.

And she couldn't tell them about the camera, wouldn't be able to explain it. Not that they would think she would have an explanation, but there would be questions—lots of questions—and possibly the police called in if Neal thought it necessary. No, no, no. Better they didn't know. At least not yet. But she couldn't leave it the way it was. Frantic, she found a bar of soap and shaved off bits of it with her fingernail. The shavings were soft and malleable and she pressed the opaque bits into the tiny cavity until the lens was completely covered.

A temporary solution, but it would have to do for now.

Shep gave off an excited bark just as she heard the front door open.

"Mom!" Marilee's voice carried up the stairs.

"In the bathroom," she yelled back. She quickly washed her hands, then pulled on a clean sweater and yoga pants.

"We got a tree!"

Was there a touch of excitement in Marilee's voice? Childlike merriment?

Brooke hoped so.

"Fabulous!" She forced a smile on her face and made her way downstairs to find her daughter grinning, finally caught up in the spirit of Christmas.

"A real one," Marilee said. "On sale!"

"Even better," Brooke said, though her insides were trembling and she couldn't forget that someone—Gideon, she believed—was spying on them.

Neal had already dragged the fir into the house and gone back outside. He now appeared with a dented Christmas tree stand and a rusted handsaw he'd found in the woodshed. "This close to the holiday the pickings were slim, but the salesman was thrilled for a sale. Let's see how this works." He sawed off a few of the lower branches and placed the little fir into the stand. Holding it in place, he said, "Tell me when it's straight."

Marilee giggled at how far the tree leaned to one side. "Uh—sorry—not yet, Dad." She gave him directions on adjusting the listing tree.

Fifteen minutes later Brooke had added water to the base of the tree stand and swept up the sawdust while Marilee had begun opening boxes of ornaments that seemed from the same era as the ones they'd found in the attic.

As Brooke eyed the glass balls and spherical shapes right out of the nineteen fifties or sixties, Neal said, "As I mentioned earlier ‘retro.' Maybe even retro cool." He was adding wood to the fire, flames crackling.

"There wasn't anything more up-to-date?"

Neal shook his head. "Not unless you wanted Smurfs circa 1985 or trolls with matted hair."

Marilee was already stringing lights and decorating with a garland of fake popcorn and cranberries.

Nearly an hour later Neal surveyed their work from the kitchen. "Not exactly Currier and Ives."

"Currier and who?" Marilee asked.

"No one you'd know," he said.

"Didn't think so." Marilee stuffed the packaging in a front closet.

"It's better than what we had." He cast a glance at the smaller tree that Brooke had tucked into a corner near the dining table.

Brooke followed his gaze. "Mm. Just by a little." She held up her thumb and forefinger, almost touching to indicate a smidge. She was trying hard to find some exuberance, to forget about the ugly reminders of Gideon Ross, but she couldn't. Her skin crawled at the thought that he was out there watching.

"Brooke?"

She snapped back to the present and caught Neal's eye. "Did you say something?"

"Just asking about dinner."

"Oh. I thought we'd eat late, you know, a light dinner, because lunch wasn't that long ago." Truth be told, she hadn't even thought about their next meal.

"I'm not hungry," Marilee said, "but how about clam chowder tomorrow? For Christmas Eve?"

"Right." Another one of their yuletide traditions: Manhattan clam chowder and hot bread. The next day she and Neal would work together on a stuffed turkey with "all the fixins," as Nana had said their last Christmas here with her. Nana had been making a pumpkin pie, her Virginia Slim forgotten and burning in an ashtray on the counter. Her eyes had twinkled behind her glasses. "Who cares if it's all a Thanksgiving redux?" she'd asked while sliding a pecan pie into the oven. "We all love it! We'll have the best Christmas ever." They hadn't of course, not with Mama already having passed.

As for this year?

With Leah on her way?

Who could guess?

Without really thinking about it, Brooke crossed her fingers.