In Death's Shadow

CHAPTER THREE

At 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning, the alarm clock practically self-destructed, but I refused to budge until the smell of coffee drifted upstairs from the high-tech coffee maker Connie had given me the previous Christmas. Consisting of one glass globe perched atop another, it operated on the vacuum principle-quietly hissing and gurgling, then erupting like Mount St. Helens-turning coffee-making into a spectator sport. Usually I was downstairs to enjoy the show, but I opened my eyes only long enough to see that it was still dark outside, turned over in bed, and drew a corner of the quilt over my head.

When I opened my eyes again, Paul was already awake, sitting up in bed with his pillow folded double behind him watching the Weather Channel with the sound turned off. "Bad news, Hannah. It's supposed to rain all day."

I wriggled across the sheet until I was nestled next to him, propped my chin on his chest and stared at the screen. An amorphous green blob hovered over a satellite map of the greater Baltimore/Washington area. "Rats!" I muttered. I waited for the image to refresh itself, praying for a change, but the blob just sat there, if anything, denser and greener. "I can't watch. It's too horrible."

Paul grunted.

"Want coffee?” I asked.

"Yup." Paul tapped a button on the remote and switched to CNN. "You sure the race is still on?"

"They said 'rain or shine,'" I grumbled as I slid out of bed and reached for my robe.

"Okay by me, but I'm not so sure I want to take the kids out in this weather."

By "kids" Paul meant our granddaughter, Chloe, age three, and her little brother, Jake, who was ten months old. And Miranda, of course. "I'm sure Emily will bring rain hats and slickers," I called out over my shoulder, "but if the weather gets too bad, you can always hang out in the Old Post Office Building, terrorizing tourists in the food court."

I had fetched the coffee and climbed back into bed when the first phone call came. Paul's friend from the history department bugging out. "Another one bites the dust," I grumped. "What's the matter? Afraid he'll get his beard wet?"

"Well, at least he'd already paid," Paul said.

"There's that," I agreed, sipping my coffee. "Paul?"

"Hmmm?"

"How do you suppose Valerie and Brian managed that cruise?"

"Cut it out, Hannah. You're obsessed with this woman's bank account."

"Not obsessed," I protested. "Just curious. Two years ago Valerie drove a ten-year-old Honda. Now it's designer clothes, a Mercedes-Benz, and trips around the world. Like they said in that movie, I want what she's having.”

"Why don't you ask her?"

"Ask her what?"

"How she did it."

"I wouldn't have the nerve."

Paul snorted. "You? Don't make me laugh, Hannah. You have more nerve than a snake charmer."

I set my cup on the bedside table and rolled over until my cheek rested against Paul's shoulder. I flung my arm loosely across his chest. "Sometimes I worry that-”

Paul's lips moved against the top of my head. "What is there to worry about?"

With my finger, I traced little circles in his slightly graying chest hair. "Maybe you're too polite to say it, but I worry that you're upset with me for not going back to work full-time."

He turned on his side to smile at me. "What's the matter, Hannah? Tired of being a kept woman?"

"No. I just need to be sure you're comfortable with my hanging around the house, working temp jobs for peanuts."

"What's not to like?" he said, gently caressing my cheek with his thumb. He tipped up my chin until I was staring straight into his bottomless cup of coffee eyes. "Back in the Bad Old Days you would already be on the road, halfway to D.C. by now." His lips brushed my mouth.

"Mmmm. This is better," I said, melting into him.

Needless to say, we got a late start.

While I showered and threw on my running clothes, Paul dressed, grabbed two apples out of the fridge, and filled a thermos with hot coffee. By the time I flew out the front door, wasting a few precious seconds to turn around and lock it, Paul had already fetched the Volvo from where he had parked it-directly across from the William Paca House, halfway down Prince George Street-and was waiting for me with the engine running.

Dawn had turned the morning pale gray, just light enough to distinguish malevolent thunderclouds piling up darkly on the horizon. Paul turned right on Maryland Avenue, squinting through the condensation on the inside of the windshield. I turned the defroster up a notch.

He circled Market Space at a crawl, pulling cautiously through intersections where traffic lights that would normally hold us up for five minutes at a time were solemnly blinking amber. By the time we crossed the Spa Creek bridge into Eastport, the rain was sluicing sideways against the windshield, and Paul had to switch the wipers from fast to frantic.

Outside, the pavement glistened like wet coal, curving gently as it wound through Hillsmere's alley of tall cedars, mature trees that had once marked the approach to the old Smith estate. Now the drive was lined on both sides by single-family homes on well-maintained, heavily wooded lots. Just past the Key School, Hillsmere Drive ended in a T at the river. On an ordinary day we would have had a panoramic view of the South River all the way across to Turkey Point. That day, though, the rain came down so hard it flattened the whitecaps and frightened away the usual sails that dotted the bay. As the wiper swept across my window, I was just able to distinguish the orange hulk of a container ship making its slow way up the bay to Baltimore harbor.

I consulted the directions Valerie had given me over the phone and instructed Paul to turn east on Bay View. On both sides of the street, modest, ranch-style homes hunkered down, dead center on quarter-acre lots. I wiped the inside of the windshield with my hand, squinting through the monsoon, trying to make out the numbers on the mailboxes. "They'll be on the right," I said, "just past the marina." As I spoke, the road curved gently to the left and I spotted a short gravel road with a cluster of masts at the end of it. "Gotta be around here somewhere," I muttered as we drew even with a dark green mailbox partially hidden by a plush boxwood hedge. "Wait! Turn here!"

Paul wheeled past the mailbox and into the driveway, tires spinning dangerously on the wet gravel. Before I could catch my breath, he slammed his foot on the brake, hard, jerking the vehicle to a halt just inches from the door of a massive three-car garage. If I hadn't been held so tightly against the seat by my seat belt, I'd have slid into a heap on the floor mat.

"Golly," I said when I pulled myself together, looked up and saw Valerie's house.

In the footprint of what had probably been a modest, sixties-style vacation home, Valerie and Brian had built a brand-new, Mediterranean-style, white stucco McMansion. Palladian windows flanked a central three-story atrium, a two-story wing meandered off into the left distance, balancing the hulk of the garage on the right, and the whole, huge wedding cake was topped by a roof of terra-cotta tile that would have looked more at home in Sardinia than on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

A house on steroids, I thought. It stretched nearly to the property line, towering over the water and its neighbors. The house next door looked like their tool shed.

"Golly, indeed," Paul agreed. "Now that's making a statement."

"What statement?" I asked, unfastening my seat belt.

Paul tugged on the zipper of his windbreaker, zipping it all the way up to his chin. "Nah, nah, nah-nah-nah," he singsonged. "I've got more money than you do!"

I had to laugh. "I don't think I'd want that monster garage defining the front of my dream house."

"Me, either," Paul agreed. "Unless you're sending the message that your cars are more important than your home itself."

"Probably needed to save room out back for the patio," I mused, growing ever more envious of Valerie's good fortune. "And the swimming pool."

On the way over we had agreed that Paul would brave the elements and make a dash to the door and ring the bell, but after seeing the exterior of the Stone estate, there was no way I was going to miss sneaking a peek inside. "Wait for me!" I called. Pulling my raincoat over my head, I dashed after him up the flagstone path that snaked through Valerie's impeccably landscaped lot.

Before Paul's finger could find the doorbell, Brian swung the door wide. Damn. I had just bet Paul that it would play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, complete with cannon.

"Hi, Hannah," Brian said. "Come in, come in." He extended his hand. "You must be Paul."

While Paul shook Brian's hand I stepped over the threshold, dripping rainwater all over Valerie's spotless marble foyer. At first I thought that Brian had cut his hair short, but when he turned his head, I noticed he'd pulled it back into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. He'd grown a mustache, too. He looked like a spokesmodel for IKEA.

"Valerie will be down in a second," Brian told us. "Miranda was a little late getting out of bed this morning."

My eyes followed the gentle curve of the staircase as it wound its way up to a balcony-style landing. Over my head an ornate chandelier, dripping prisms, blazed in the early morning light. Why on earth did Valerie need to get a babysitter? I wondered. I could only assume that the Stones were between nannies.

"Gorgeous house, Brian," I commented dryly. "How long have you lived here?"

"Just moved in," he said, pointing to the living room where several packing boxes sat open on the parquet near a casual grouping of overstuffed white leather furniture. The north wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling fieldstone fireplace, and on the opposite side of the room, a picture window overlooked the bay. Even in the wretched weather, the view was spectacular. I could see now why Valerie liked to drink her coffee on the patio.

"Big," said Paul.

Brian laughed. "Yeah. Why just the other day I went looking for my glasses and discovered a bedroom I didn't even know we had!"

"Oh, Bry, you are impossible!" Valerie called down from the landing. "Don't you believe a word of what he says! It's only thirty-five hundred square feet, and Brian designed every square inch of it."

"Impressive," I said. I wasn't particularly good at math, but counting the atrium, and with twelve-foot ceilings everywhere else, I figured the cubic footage of Brian's humble abode probably approached that of Buckingham Palace.

With a hint of a smile on his lips, Brian turned to watch his wife and daughter skip down the stairs. Miranda's white-blond hair was bound with fat, pink rubber bands into two ponytails that coiled like springs on either side of her head. She hopscotched across the tiles, then stood, feet primly together, on the plush Bokhara carpet.

Behind her, Valerie looked fresh-scrubbed and radiant in a hot pink Spandex jogging bra and matching shorts, an outfit that rendered my husband temporarily speechless. I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. "Paul, this is my friend Valerie."

Valerie bent at the waist to whisper in Miranda's ear. "Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Ives, Miranda."

Miranda looked up at me sideways through a fringe of colorless lashes. "Hello." She stuck out a foot. "I have new shoes."

"Indeed you do," I said. "What a pretty pink."

Miranda tapped her foot on the carpet and the heel of her tennis shoe lit up like an emergency vehicle. "They flash."

Brian laid a broad hand on the top of his daughter's head. "'All the better to see you with, my dear,'" he quoted.

Valerie produced a Little Red Riding Hood slicker from the hall closet and helped Miranda into it. All the child needed was a basket of goodies and she'd be ready to set off through the woods to grandmother's house.

Valerie slung a duffel bag over her shoulder. "Ready or not, here we come!"

"Prepare yourself," I said.

Laughing, Brian scooped Miranda up in his arms and we followed him out, into the fury of the storm.