Wild Orchids Part 15

I looked at the old building, looked back at Jackie, and I knew she wanted something. No one on earth could get that excited about a standing pile of termites without a reason. "All right," I said, "how much is this gonna cost me?"

Nate gave a kind of laugh, then said he thought he'd go work on the front yard for a while. After he was gone, I looked at Jackie. "What's this all about?"

"A... a summerhouse," she said. "You could write out here."

She knew very well that I liked being at the top of the house and looking out at the mountains, so I didn't bother to reply to that statement.

After a while she gave a sigh and pulled open one of the doors to the building. I was surprised the hinges held. I followed her inside. It was two rooms and had probably been built to be a garden house with attached storage. There was one fairly large room with floor to ceiling windows on two sides. A wide doorway in one solid wall led into a storage room that was also quite s.p.a.cious. My main thought was disgust at the state of a property that could hide a building this size.

Jackie was chattering nonstop, pointing out the big galvanized sink in one corner of the second room, and talking about the light coming through the cracked and broken windows in the main room.

My stomach gave a loud rumble. It was nearly two o'clock and I was hungry, but I was having to listen to this build-up to a punch line that didn't seem to be coming any time soon.

"You're hungry!" Jackie said in a loving and kind tone. "Come on and I'll make you some lunch."

Fifty grand, I thought. That's what this great concern for the state of my belly was going to cost me. Never mind that I was under the illusion that this young woman was my employee and was therefore to do what I wanted her to. I'd been married. I knew what that sweeter-than-nectar voice meant. Jackie wanted something big from me.

I didn't say anything as I followed her into the kitchen. And I sat in silence as I watched her scurry about making me a sandwich Dagwood would envy, and a cup of soup. It was some kind of expensive soup with one of those labels meant to make it look like it came from Aunt Rhoda's kitchen, but it still wasn't homemade.

Heaven help me, but I began to tell Jackie about this wonderful bean soup that Pat used to make from scratch. The truth was that Pat had found out she could empty four different cans into a pot and it came out tasting pretty good. Pat's mother was a cook; Pat was not.

It was interesting to watch Jackie's face fall when I mentioned "homemade soup." She stopped in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes wide in horror.

It was difficult for me not to laugh, but I was willing to bet that I got homemade soup tomorrow. Obviously, whatever Jackie wanted with that old building was important to her.

Throughout lunch, she chatted in a way that was meant to amuse me.

Geishas weren't as charming as she was.

I ate in silence and waited to see when she was going to drop the stone on my head.

By four she'd maneuvered us into the newly-furnished small parlor, and I was beginning to get sleepy. I'd been charmed all I could take. All in all, I liked the tart-tongued Jackie better.

Gradually, the words "business deal" came through to me and I realized she was at last getting to the heart of the matter. Since I'd been dozing, I'd missed a lot of what she was saying, but it seemed that she wanted me to back her in some kind of business venture.

Here. In Cole Creek.

I blinked a few times to clear the sleep out of my eyes and said, "Yesterday we were talking about your getting out of Cole Creek as fast as possible because you may have witnessed a murder, but today you want to open a business here?"

"Yeah. Well," she said. "I-" Lifting her hands helplessly, she looked up at me, her eyes pleading. "Couldn't you write about something else?"

"So now it's my fault," I said. "Did it occur to you that if I write about something besides the devil story there's no reason for me to be in this dead town?"

"Oh," she said, her eyes downcast, but then she looked up at me brightly.

"You'll never be able to sell this house so maybe I can stay here and be the caretaker."

"And run your business," I said.

Jackie looked at me as though I'd won the prize.

I leaned toward her. "In all your b.u.t.tering-up of me, did you ever tell me what business you want to open?"

She opened her mouth as though she meant to say she hadn't been "b.u.t.tering me up," but the next second she jumped up, leaped over an ottoman, and I heard her running up the stairs. I leaned back in the chair-a nice one. In fact I liked all the furniture Jackie had bought-and closed my eyes. Maybe twenty winks would do me good. Help me to think.

But Jackie was back in about three minutes and she dropped two books on my lap. On top was a big, color, trade paperback on photographing children, and she opened it to the last few pages. There were some truly exquisite black-and-white photos of children by a man named Charles Edward Georges.

Jackie sat down on the ottoman at my feet. "Taken with all natural light,"

she said quietly.

It didn't take a genius to put two and two together. There were six double-page photos made by this man and in the background could be seen windowsills with peeling paint.

I flipped through the book. Wonderful photos of children. Black and white. Color. Sepia. Studio portraits, candids. Several had been taken in a lush garden. A garden like the one around my old house could be.

I put that book down and picked up the other one. It was a smaller paperback, published by the University of North Carolina, and it was on orchids in the southern Appalachians.

I looked at Jackie. "Hobby," she said, meaning the portraits were to make money, the flower photos were to be a hobby.

Putting the books down, I leaned back in the chair, and said, "Tell me everything."

It took some questioning on my part, but I was finally able to figure out why she'd called off her wedding and why she'd been so angry at her former fiance. Seems the jerk had stolen her life savings, money she'd planned to use to open a small photography studio.

I pointed out that she could prosecute, but she said her former fiance's father was a judge and his cousin was president of the bank. I'd not grown up in a circle of judges or presidents of anything, but I sure did know about the "ol' boy system."

As I listened to her, I thought I might call a lawyer I knew and see what could be done about this. While I was thinking, Jackie said something that caught my attention.

"What?" I asked.

"It was the name Harriet that did it," she said. "And the dates, of course."

"What was?"

I could see that she was itching to say something snarly to me because of my inattention, but since she was. .h.i.tting me up for investment money, she didn't dare. Brother! It was tempting to see how much she'd take and still pretend to be sweet-tempered.

"Harriet Cole," she said with exaggerated patience. "It was the name that got me. See, my father had a... Well, a bit of a fetish about Harriet Lane. She was-"

"The niece of President James Buchanan," I said. "Magnificent..." I held my hands out in front of my chest.

It was quite gratifying to see Jackie's eyes widen in surprise. How many people knew such an obscure piece of information? "Right," she said slowly, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "Anyway, I think I got scared because when I heard the name 'Harriet' I a.s.sociated it with my father and thought maybe she'd been my mother."

She hadn't told me this, but I'd guessed something of the sort that night at the party. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to not know who your parents were. I'd never met my father, but I certainly knew where he was.

h.e.l.l, I even knew the number on his shirt.

"So now you've decided you're safe," I said. "And that you saw nothing, and you have no connection to anyone in town. All because you found a rotten old building buried under half a ton of overgrown grapevines."

She gave a little smile. "More or less."

I wasn't going to tell her so, but the man inside me was jumping up and down and shouting, "Hallelujah!" I don't know what it was about that empty little town, but I was beginning to like it there.

"Okay," I said, and I could see that it took her a moment to understand that I was saying yes to her project.

She jumped up, threw her arms around my neck, and began kissing my face as though I were her father.

Maybe she felt daughterly toward me, but I certainly didn't feel fatherly toward her. Rather than make a fool of myself by showing her this, I kept my arms at my side and my lips closed-and moved them away when she got too near.

After this moment of childish exuberance, she pulled her face away, but her arms were still around my neck. "I'm sorry about Rebecca," she said softly.

Part of me wanted her to get far away from me, and part of me wanted her to get much closer. If she didn't move away soon, the closer part was going to win.

"And your wife," she said.

That did it. I put my hands on her shoulders, moved her away, and got up. "Fix up the old building," I said, "and give me the bill."

CHAPTER TEN.

Jackie He was great about the building. Of course I had to work hard to lead him up to my idea, but it was worth it.

It seemed that all my life I'd had an affinity for cameras, and my father once said that I was taking pictures by the time I was three. I'd taken some courses in photography, but with the way we moved around, I never got to complete any of them. And I'd never been able to take all the pictures I wanted because film and processing cost too much. Over the years I'd been tempted to apply for a job in a photography studio, but my vanity wouldn't allow it. I was afraid that if I learned to take pictures from someone commercial I'd never develop my own style. Not creative enough for me!

That, and the fact that the only photography studio in the last three towns my dad and I lived in had been in the local mall.

My plan had been to let Kirk support me while I used my savings and my inheritance to open a small photography studio. When I told Ford about Kirk, he was certainly interested! Ford asked me about fifty questions about who, where, and how much. I told him I never wanted anything to do with Kirk again, but Ford kept asking me questions, and since I was trying to get him to finance my new business, I couldn't very well snap that it was none of his business.

In the end Ford came through and said he'd pay for fixing up the building so I could use it. I didn't mention that I would, of course, have to add a small powder room onto the back of the house. When kids have to go, they have to go, so you have to have a WC nearby. There was water in the house, but I'd have to hook onto the city sewage and that would cost.

Nor did I mention that I'd also need money to buy equipment. I had my camera and a wonderful lens, but I'd also need lights and soft boxes, reflectors, tripods, flash brackets, a few backgrounds, and, well, some darkroom equipment and supplies, as I hadn't-ha ha-seen a super photo processing shop in or around Cole Creek. And I'd need another lens or two.

Or three.

During our long conversation about my opening a business, he asked me why I'd changed my mind and no longer wanted to get out of Cole Creek as fast as possible. I think I lied well. Actually, it was more that I left out some things. I told the truth when I said the name "Harriet" had rung a big gong in my head-and Ford nearly knocked me over when he knew who Harriet Lane was.

During the night, I'd decided that my overactive imagination had made me believe I knew more than I did about what did or did not happen in Cole Creek. By dinner-candlelight, seafood, chocolate cake-I was calmer since Ford had agreed to renovate the building, so we talked in depth about what we both knew and had found out. It was our first real heart-to-heart in days.

I told him about my several dej vu instances in Cole Creek, and about how I knew the house so well.

"But you didn't know that building was out there," he said.

"Maybe I did," I answered, because I'd gone straight to it on the first morning I started cleaning up the garden.

As always, he was an attentive listener. I told him I remembered so many things about the house that I even knew where the hidden room was-and until that moment I hadn't remembered there even was a secret room. At that, we looked at each other in complete understanding.

"Second floor," I said. "Behind all those boxes."

We jumped up so quickly that both our chairs. .h.i.t the floor, and we took off running, reaching the doorway at the same time. I was going to push ahead of him, but I remembered the camera equipment I wanted, so I stepped back. "You first," I said politely.

Ford looked at me as though he was going to be a gentleman and let me go ahead, but then he said, "Beat you up the stairs," and took off running.

What could I do after a challenge like that? What he didn't know was that a little door in the kitchen, which looked like a broom closet, actually opened to a set of stairs so narrow I doubt if Ford could have climbed them. As he ran for the big front stairs, I slipped up the back and was waiting for him when he arrived.

The look on his face! If I'd had my camera that photo would have won every prize given.

I knew he was dying to ask me how I'd beaten him to the top, but he didn't. Instead, we ran to the storage room and began flinging boxes into the hallway.

It wasn't much of a secret room. It was just a part of a room that had been made into a closet, then sealed off. Someone (me as a child?) had pulled the old wallpaper off so the door could open a few inches. We had to pull hard to open it wide enough to allow Ford to get inside.

"Why would someone seal off a closet?" Ford asked.

We were together inside the small s.p.a.ce and it was absolutely dark.

Ford rummaged around inside his pockets and withdrew a book of matches-the contents of his pockets rivaled a nine-year-old boy's-and lit one. When he held the flame up, all I saw was old wallpaper behind him.

But Ford's eyes widened until I could see the whites. He blew out the match, then said in a voice of such exaggerated calm that it put fear into me, "Get out. Open the door and get out."

I did as he said-one obeys that tone-and left the closet, Ford close behind me. Once he was out, he closed the door and leaned against it.

"What was it?" I whispered, and the word "devil" went through me. Was the devil in this house? Maybe as a kid I'd found this closet and I'd seen- "Bees," he said.

"What?"

"The biggest beehive I've ever seen was behind you. The bees probably built in that closet, and instead of getting rid of it, some lazy so-and-so sealed the door shut."

"I thought-" I began, then started to laugh, and when I told Ford about my devil thoughts, he laughed, too.

We laughed together but we didn't touch. I'd decided to do no more touching of him. Earlier I'd spontaneously thrown my arms around his neck and kissed him, just as I would have done with my father. But suddenly I didn't feel like I was with my father.

When I'd pulled back from him, I thought that he didn't look old at all. In fact, those lines at his eyes were more like character lines than old age wrinkles. And he had a very nice mouth. In fact, the more time I spent with him, the better looking he got. John Travolta, I thought. Even as out of shape as he was, Travolta was still s.e.xy. And so was Ford.

Abruptly, I'd dropped my arms from around his neck. First I was l.u.s.ting after a gorgeous seventeen-year-old, and now I was drooling over a man old enough to be my... Well, too old for me, anyway.

I decided I needed to start dating.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.