Hello, My name is Lorraine A. Balint, submitting for the approval of TWO fandoms, a unique vision of incredible creativity, unbridled passion, and staggering genius--- well, okay, it's just a fan-fiction crossover uniting the gritty world of "Cagney and Lacey" with the sometimes-otherworldly ambience of "Dark Shadows". I was inspired to this act, some would say of desecration of BOTH shows, by the simple coincidence that John Karlen happened to play "Willie Loomis" and "Carl Collins" (among other characters) on DS, and later, went on to play "Harvey Lacey" on CandL.
Well, maybe not so simple a coincidence, when you stop to think about it. For starters, he was NOT the first choice for either the role of "Willie" OR "Harvey". Both roles had been "created" by other, different types of actors, who were seldom seen thereafter, though THEIR stints as these characters are occasionally re-broadcast. For whatever reason, the venues of both characters underwent revision, the former actors were either unavailable or unsatisfactory, and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.
John Karlen became heavily involved in two of the most unique, cutting-edge (for their times) television programs of the entire TV era, which have often been imitated, but never duplicated (even DS, which cloned itself for a brief period in 1991, without ANY of the original cast.) He played characters that had never been seen, nor, in the case of off-the-wall, sexually-ambiguous "Willie" and "Carl", had even DARED to exist, and whose exact orientations are still a subject for hot debate in DS Internet discussion groups, to this day. Not just your average "Renfield" type, especially "Willie", whom he was called upon to play in TWO versions: an unattractive, uneducated drifter; and an intellectual, but alcoholic writer unhappily married into a rich family, both victims of the same vampire, Barnabas Collins (who really got around) and both full of pathos in their own ways.
John Karlen won an Emmy (and was nominated 5 times more) for portraying a character he derided, later in life, as a "fop househusband". But most people who still are faithful followers of CandL will agree, there was more to "Harvey" than a great recipe for spaghetti sauce and lust for Wife. Virtually nobody can depict the extremes of joy and frustration better, or, for the most part, in better context. Any fault with the context itself was, to be blunt, mainly the fault of just about everybody else--- whoever was writing, directing, and producing that season, or that WEEK. (The same can be said--- and has been said umpteen times--- about the production values and continuity contradictions on DS.) Granted, there were times when his depiction of "Harvey" carried some baggage from some of his previous roles--- I can pick out the "Willie" moments--- but in his own words in his hyper-ecstatic interview after receiving that Emmy, "It finally worked!" DAMN straight!
(If you haven't yet read my review of his performance in "Daughters of Darkness",
check out
"My DS essays and Filks" section.)
My favorite saying regarding this splendid twist of fate, is that "Harvey"
is just the sort of person "Willie" would haved aspired to be like if he
ever "grew up." This story is my chance to explore this contention, expand
on it, thus rendering my own tribute to someone whom, even though we are but mildly
acquainted, is one of my favorite human beings in the known universe and an honorary
member of my extended DS "family." And also, to pay tribute to the common
threads, sometimes hard to locate, but they're there--- running through two programs
about people trying to cope with forces bigger than themselves, and who tried to
bring morality,
or at least order, to disorderly and immoral / amoral surroundings.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
NOTES FOR THE STICKLERS:
Most "Cagney and Lacey" afficionados won't be able to help but notice that I have chosen to go with the very basic triumvirate of Mary Beth, Christine, and Harvey, featuring Alice and Michael, and a couple of fitting guest shots. It owes as much to my relative inexpertise in dealing with all the ensemble from the original show, as it does to the demands of the actual story I am telling. Sure, it would have been nice to have Isbiecki and Petrie ditch the families for a week to come up to Maine for some trout fishing, or have a visit from Samuels (since he's my fave male character after Harvey, maybe I'll get him up to Maine some day.) Scrounging around for one of Chris's old beaux to hound her latest romance would have been neat, but I had a two-week time frame (in what passes for real time) with which to work. People in their 50's don't generally act like that, anyway. I wanted to compare and contrast realism and fantasy, not re-write the rulebook for humanity.
I based everything mainly on the last movie, so the leads are basically 5 years older, but for my purposes, haven't changed all that much (the Sheriff's job in Collinsport shouldn't provide a big physical challenge for a lady in Mary Beth's stage of life), except for Alice. For the purpose of the story, I have promoted her to age 16 rather than reflect her "official" age of 14, because I don't think a 14-year-old should be out riding with boys in cars, nor should they be bitten by lustful vampires. "Dracula meets Lolita?" Not on MY watch, buddy! I believe I SHOULD be allowed to get away with it, since the pregnancy that produced this character dragged through TWO seasons, beginning with Tyne Daly's real-life pregnancy which was only gradually worked into the plotline. "Sixteen candles make a lovely light", and marginally less "statutory" than 14!
The vast majority of the work reflects my primary expertise with "Dark Shadows" past and present, including what some may regard as uncomfortably close matches with the present-day conditions of the stars. While yes, physically, there has to be a resemblance, and yes, it reflects their varying ages, this should NOT be construed as editorial comment on their real-life personalities! If one watches the old DS, and then goes to our conventions, or Festivals, one soon discovers that, while of course, the performers put the stamp of their own personalities on their characters to a certain extent, the details of their personal lives took a widely divergent path from those of their characters. The same can be said of most CandL personnel.
So relax, kick back, and enjoy the ride, people. And don't be afraid to communicate
your opinions, suggestions, criticisms (CONSTRUCTIVE, that is.)
Lorraine
A. Balint
Gleaming Eagle Productions
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LEGAL DEPARTMENT: All "DARK SHADOWS" characters, places, and basic
story themes are Copyright of DAN CURTIS PRODUCTIONS, and are based mainly upon the
original 1966-1971 serial.
All "CAGNEY AND LACEY" characters, places, and story themes are Copyright of MACE NEUFIELD PRODUCTIONS and BARNEY ROSENSWEIG PRODUCTIONS, and are based on some of the original program from 1982-1988, and the last CandL film, "True Convictions", 1995. (Characters created by Terry Louise Fisher.)
This is a NOT-FOR-PROFIT work. It was conceived and written WITHOUT intention of financial gain. The reader is free to download it and even print it (though I would appreciate being informed of THIS, mainly for statistical purposes.) However, I ask that readers DO respect the rights of the above.
Many thanks to "Dark Childe" who owns the biggest and most comprehensive Cagney and Lacey website (see my "LINKS" page") and to the wonderful folks on the CandL mailing list, for helping me with some of the details about this program, to which fandom I am but a novice. "Thou art the coral of goodness, and the ruby of brightness."
And, of course, to all my buds in DS fandom, both face-time and virtual, especially the DS newsgroup, who persevere in spite of trolls and Internet screw-ups, to bring forth consistently informative and entertaining references, debate and trivia. "We go together, like bang-shanga-loo-bang, a long bang boom!" Uh. . . just kidding, guys. Guys?. . .
And, of course, for the man who inspired this madness. . .
". . .Love
is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds. . ."
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
CAGNEY AND LACEY: RESTITUTION:
Dark Shadows in the Land of
Dreams
A Crossover Novel by Lorraine A. Balint
aka, Aquilablanco
aka, Voice of
Sweet Reason
aka, The Silver Rose
Copyright 2000, by Gleaming Eagle Productions.
. . .Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To
lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath
really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
pain;
And here we are as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of
struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
---------------------------------------------------------
Last
night
I remembered winter
I remembered ice like sparkling jewels on a tree
I
remembered the snow that blew across
my window in the wind
And I thought, if
it just keeps blowing,
where will it ever fall?
This morning,
The summer
sun bounced off a car window
And burned my eyes.
The world was so hot
I
was afraid to touch anything,
Even myself.
Then I thought, how frightening
it was,
the way things can change.
Joan Fox (1952-69)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PROLOGUE:
He found himself in a large, empty hall full of a confused pattern
of colors in undefinable shapes. He could just make out the shadowed figure of another
man at the opposite corner of this hall. He wondered if the other man was as bewildered
by being present in this hall as he certainly was. Then suddenly, there was the reverberating
sound of a whinnying laugh--- full of hysterical satisfaction, if there WAS such
a condition. He turned around wildly, searching for the source of the sound, and
he noticed the other man, also, whirling about in confusion. Then the laughter stopped,
and the voice that had produced it now spoke. There was something familiar about
this voice, though he couldn't quite identify it in the distracting swirl of echoes
and colors that now seemed to press him gently but insistently, like a massage.
Still, he forced himself to listen to the voice, believing that it would tell him
why he and the other man were here.
"They said it could not be done,"
the voice said with a wild cackle of laughter. "But it NEEDED doing. They
always said I COULDN'T do it, but see? I have you both here now---" Then a
near-deafening racket drowned out the rest of what the voice was saying. . . The
colors, and the other man, vanished in a flash---
* * * * * * * * * * * *
PART ONE--- MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2000
3:30 AM!!! The alarm screamed once-and-a-half, and the LED numbers blinked on-off just twice, before the man who had set the alarm in the first place slammed his heavy hand on the "OFF" button. He sat up, his mind addled from some peculiar dream he barely remembered (except that it WAS peculiar), his body refusing to believe that it was going to be forced into action at such an early hour for some purpose other than work. "Don't know why it hurts more to get up early for something fun, than it EVER did for something that HAD to be done," he thought, as he gazed over to the (mercifully!) still-sleeping form of his wife in the bed beside him. Bad enough SHE still had to rise for her own job in another two hours, but her work these days wasn't nearly as demanding as it had been where they used to live. Still, she would have grouched at him for disturbing her rest, and scolded him for risking his health---
"You've had two bypasses already! The doctors TOLD you to take it easy, they're afraid to do another! Don't just go jumping out of bed like that, even that could kill you! And for WHAT, the fishing? And alone, when it's still dark out there in the woods? I mean, can't you WAIT till sun-up? The fish aren't going to disappear!"
That's why you WANTED us to move here, isn't it, he answered her imagined nagging.
For my health! The fishing, the great outdoors! We haven't been here long enough
for me to make any fishing buddies yet. Maybe I'll run into somebody out there.
And, dammit, I'm taking my pills with me, and the cell phone with "911"
in its memory, all charged and ready to go!
He was satisfied with this line
of reasoning, though for some reason, he felt a little guilty about thinking that
way, as though he'd actually spoken aloud. That's what being married forever will
do to you, he thought, as he touched his wife's hair. She turned over, facing him,
and he sat for another minute, fearful that she would wake. Though she gave a little
sigh, she slept on.
In a burst of determination, he heaved himself up and out, to the spare bedroom, where he'd laid out his clothing and gear the night before. His first fishing expedition since moving to Maine! he thought, triumphantly, as he pulled on the new boots and fitted the hat, which was stuck through with the requisite hooks and lures. The very first thing on the very first day of the season--- there WERE perks to being the new Sheriff's husband, including getting the first fishing license of the year.
He made coffee, and filled a large thermos. He then took up his fishing poles and his tackle-box, and was almost safely out the door, when his teen-aged daughter came out of her room, yawning and scratching, on her way to the bathroom. She stopped in her tracks when she saw him, and glared at him in disapproval, but not for sneaking out of the house like that.
"Going out to massacre some of our piscine brothers and sisters this day, are we?" she hissed.
He often made a joke of her current tendency to use big words, though he was secretly envious of her ability to use them. Now, he was just irritated, and eager to be gone. "No, Alice, I'm just going to pierce their lips so they'll look like YOURS." He pointed at her lower lip, which was indeed, festooned with three tiny gold rings. They matched her nostrils, which were similarly pierced, and her ears, each of which sported four or five gold rings and studs apiece--- he couldn't count them in the dim hall light. How could she sleep like that? he wondered. "PLEASE do me a favor, sweetheart," he wheedled. "Take at least SOME of those off before you go to your first day of school later. This is Maine, not New York."
"Oh, PLEASE, father of mine," she sniffed, "I met some of the kids already, and some of them have more sharp little shiney things stuck on them than I do." She crossed her arms, and stared at him again. "Does Mom know you're running away from home to slay the wicked trout?"
"Yeah, but I didn't tell her I was leaving this early. Don't tattle on me until I'm long gone, and MAYBE I won't make you eat one of your so-called brothers and sisters later."
"Naw, I'll just wait until one of my REAL brothers shows up. Mike especially. I covet his motorcycle."
"Right, DON'T eat a fish, but DO eat your big brother for his suicide machine. Makes sense to me. Now, I HAVE to get going, honey." He kissed her cheek, far away from the lip-rings. "Be good."
"I'm ALWAYS good, Daddy. A regular geek, even with all the holes in my head."
"That's my girl. See you later---" Too late!
"Just where do you think YOU'RE going at this hour, Harvey Lacey?"
Mary Beth Lacey, his formerly-sleeping spouse, wearing a heavy robe ("I feel so COLD since we got to Maine, and it's April already!"), her greying hair tumbling over her stalwart shoulders, stood in the hallway. "There's a regular party going on here, and nobody invited ME, but the racket was enough to wake the dead! And, God knows, I hear enough of THOSE stories these days. Now, are BOTH of you ditching the new Sheriff of Collinsport? I mean, Alice, you haven't even had your first day of school yet, so you can't possibly hate it enough to run away, back to the city. And as for YOU, Harv, didn't I warn you about getting up in the middle of the night, the big dark woods---
Harvey cut her off at the pass. "First day of fish season--- everyone and their brother will be out there. I got my pills, I got the phone. Great outdoors, here I come!" He gave Mary Beth a quick kiss to forestall any further protests, and hurried out the front door.
Alice, left alone with her formidable mother, cringed a little. "I didn't do anything!" she wailed. "I just got up to go to the john! I tried to talk Daddy out of going! It's all HIS fault!"
"Alice, just hurry up, then go back to bed. But FIRST take some of that metal out of your face! I'll let you sleep a little bit later, and drive you to school. I'll just stay up myself here, it's four-thirty already, and I won't be able to rest knowing your Dad is out in the woods alone. God, I worry more than I ever did in New York, and it's only been a couple of weeks. I just don't get it! I mean, NOTHING's happened since I took over from the last sheriff. But I have this feeling. . ."
"Well, maybe when Aunt Christine comes to visit, she'll understand," Alice said consolingly. "She ALWAYS does." Now SHE kissed Mary Beth, and trotted off to her long-deferred appointment in the bathroom.
Why, oh why did we ever come here? Mary Beth thought, as she made her own coffee. The job offer had come from nowhere, like the jackpot of a lottery she didn't remember entering. When the circumstances were explained to her, that a town seeking to update its image had accumulated a list of urban law enforcement personnel at similar levels of experience and circumstances from which to choose, and that she was one of the finalists, she decided, for once, not to question her good fortune. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for someone who wanted some peace and quiet before settling down to complete retirement. The pay and pension plans were surprisingly good for such a small town, nearly as much as she'd made back in New York, but, as she learned, the bulk of the town's wealth emanated from the Collins family canneries and other business enterprises. "They can afford the best, and, apparently, you're the best, if they chose YOU," the first selectman, Braithewaite by name, had told Mary Beth during a preliminary interview, just two months earlier.
"They-- they don't OWN me, they won't tell me how to do my job, will they? I mean, if I have to arrest one of their kids for drunk driving, I'll do it," Mary Beth had declared.
Braithewaite, she learned immediately, was a stereotypical small-town gossip. "I don't think THAT will be a problem", he assured her. "David and Hallie Collins, the current proprietors of the estate and the cannery, are tee-totallers, if you can believe it. I can't, especially since David's father, Roger, was involved in a fatal, alcohol-related accident over forty years ago. He wasn't the driver, a friend was, but everyone in the car was drunk. The man who got hit WASN'T. And Roger continued as quite the tippler for some years beyond that."
"No designated drivers back then," Mary Beth sighed. "Well, it seems this David learned from his Dad's example. I hope the lesson was contagious to HIS kids, as well."
"I guess so. . . Of course, HIS oldest boy is going on seventeen, who knows what the future holds? But getting back to your original point, Mrs. Lacey, I think you'll find the Collinses quite "hands off." The town will be your official employer. You will come up for re-appointment every four years, but if your work is satisfactory, I think I can guarantee your job security. It's been a quiet area for a number of years, now, so I don't see how your performance could be any LESS than satisfactory."
"There WAS trouble, then---"
"Yes, but that's going back over a quarter-century. It's all in the files--- the old-fashioned, hand-scribbled kind. We only just got a computer a few years ago, and most of the stuff hasn't been copied yet."
Mary Beth, who hated using computers for anything, even though, with her determined nature, she wasn't surprised to have become adept at it, was enchanted with the idea of leisurely perusing the interesting case histories of yesteryear. "Sounds like my kind of job already! If I can convince my husband and daughter to move, then I'm here YESTERDAY!"
The move was easier than Mary Beth could have hoped for. The spacious ranch house, almost twice the size of her former home, and skirting a state forest, was reasonably-priced, with an assumable mortgage at a good rate. The accredited high school was only two miles away, near a new supermarket, the Eagle Superstore, and all the town's professionals, including some Board-certified physicians, were conveniently on Main Street (including a well-known cardiologist for Harvey, whose heart condition had deteriorated in the last couple of years.) There were rivers stocked with fish, and the ocean breeze tickled the olfactory from all over town. There wasn't much crime to speak of. She didn't even mind having to wear a uniform and badge again, after long years as a plain-clothes detective, and then an investigator for the D.A's office. She had forgotten how nice it was to not have to waste time scrambling for some suitable outfit late at night or first thing in the morning--- and the cleaning bills! The uniform was wash'n'wear, and Harvey made a point of assuring her that she looked fine in shades of tan.
It was perfect, TOO perfect, or so it seemed, until Sheriff Mary Beth Lacey, a week into her new position, and already bored, started reading those old files, preparatory to entering them on the computer.
For this chore, she had the assistance of her deputy sheriff, Job Woodard. Mary Beth would think, what a one-horse town Collinsport is, with just herself, a couple of deputies to help cover the three shifts, and police force of 20, at least in off-season. For the summer, she would be responsible for re-hiring a few retired police to act as auxiliaries, but that was it, unless a crime wave hit, in which case she would have to call in surrounding towns' police. She was disgruntled that she wouldn't even have the clerical help necessary to help transcribe what turned out to be large boxes of dusty files--- one secretary was out on maternity leave, and the other sneezed so much at the dust, Mary Beth took pity, and sent her home until she could air out the boxes.
And her deputy. . . JOB? There was scarcely a Jewish family in town, but this town was so old-fashioned, a substantial number of its citizens, even some of the children, were named for Biblical characters other than the usual Sarahs, Elizabeths, Matthews, and Jonathans. Job, aged about forty-five, had a wife named Hepsey, short for Hepzibah, and children named Saul, Abe, and the twins, Dorcas and Tabitha.
Job himself was the only son of a David, who, in his lifetime, had been the only doctor in Collinsport proper, thirty years earlier. When Mary Beth started to pull out a box of files, marked "1966-1968", Job, usually laconic, became talkative about that time. "Poor Pop died while in the middle of investigating some strange goings-on," Job said. "The coroner said it was heart failure, but Mom didn't believe it, nor did Dad's brothers. And neither did the sheriff at the time, George Patterson, and this rich fellow named Burke Devlin, who was trying to help a family friend whose daughter had been kidnapped, then escaped in such a sickly state, they let people think she was dead until they could catch the kidnappers."
"And did they catch them?" Mary Beth asked, a little anxiously. Unsolved cases were a dime a dozen back in New York; with the sheer volume, it couldn't be helped. But out here, in a town that, outside of tourist season, probably boasted no more than 8,000 citizens at any given time?
"We-e-ell, I'm not sure if you could say this case was closed," Job drawled. "I mean, yeah, they caught at least ONE person who was involved, and somehow it got around to where there seemed to be proof he was the only one, but this is--- well, WAS a strange situation, Ma'am, I mean Sheriff."
"How's THAT?" Mary Beth nudged. "What was so strange, and whatever happened to the perpetrator?"
Job pulled out a sheaf of folders and handed them over. "It was strange because of the circumstances of the abduction. See, here's the name and picture of the victim. One Miss Margaret Evans, waitress. This came after a series of wierd attacks, bitemarks and some blood-lettin', on some of our young ladies and at least one man, the one who was later accused of kidnapping her. A newcomer to town, a drifter you might say, name of Willie Loomis." Job picked through the files. "Day-yam," he said, "I thought there was a picture somewheres of him, God knows he had a Helluva record, even back in your New York. I can't understand it. But what the heck, you'll likely be seeing him one of these days yourself."
"EXCUSE ME?" Mary Beth shouted. "What, this CREEP is LOOSE? Paroled,
I mean?
Why did he come back HERE?"
"Ma'am, Loomis was never paroled, because he never went to prison. Never was even TRIED, as a matter of fact. . . He and Miss Evans, Maggie we called her, still do---"
"SHE'S still here, with the kidnapper hanging around?"
"Listen, Sheriff, Ma'am, there's just some things you hafta understand about things run in Collinsport. . . My dad told me, before he died, how Willie was shot up when he tried to go to Maggie's place after she came back home, then he went crazy, couldn't remember a thing. Maggie had kinda the same problem, too, never was clear on just who took her, or what happened. . . All we know is that she lost a lot of blood in the process, but she was still as pure as the driven snow. Maybe this WAS a sexual thing, but it never came to rape, anyway. So Willie went to the state mental place for a while. When he didn't recover there, a shrink-doctor lady who was taking care of Maggie, had him sent to her own hospital where Maggie had been hiding out. When Willie was a little better, Maggie was so unclear about him being the one, she had the charges dropped, and he came back to work for his former boss, a member of the Collins Family who'd come from England. Barnabas, HE's called. Anyway, after a couple of fits and starts, I guess Willie and Maggie patched it up somehow, and HE hasn't been a problem in YEARS. Still works for Mr. Collins on the estate, too, and the lady doctor, name of Julia Hoffman, at least until she died a few years back. She was married to Barnabas Collins, after the trouble died down."
Mary Beth had been perusing the files while listening to the tale. Now her head was spinning. "Sounds TOO cozy for words," she commented. "Okay, so we have this kidnapping codger and his boss on this estate, presumably too old to cause further mischief. Where is this Margaret Evans in town, and what's she up to now?" She gazed upon the old picture of the pretty auburn-haired waitress, then in her early twenties.
"Barnabas and Willie aren't alone, Ma'am," Job said. "Barnabas and Julia had one son, pretty late in life for the both of 'em, young Jeremy. He's about, let's see, twenty-seven. Willie, of course, never married at all, no decent woman around here would give him the time o' day, save for the Collins ladies and Maggie. Maggie, now, she has an art gallery here in town, kinda quiet now in off-season, but a big hit with the tourists. Her dad, Sam Evans, was a painter, and she's got the knack from him, so she got some other local artists together to help sell all their stuff. But she's not Evans any more, she was married for a while to some psychic fellah named Sebastian Shaw. He wasn't much of a psychic though, he didn't predict how his car would get run off the road by a crazy teenage driver, and wrapped around a tree."
"You sound pretty callous about that, Job," Mary Beth frowned.
"Well, he lost HIS knack early on, and poor Maggie had to support him. Only thing Shaw did for her was give her a really nice daughter, Victoria Samantha. She's almost twenty-five, and a new teacher at the high school."
"Maybe my daughter will have her for one of her classes. Alice is a junior this year."
"I'm not sure, I'd have to ask the wife. She's the school's head secretary."
"What's she look like, this Maggie? She must be close to my age."
"Well, Sheriff Ma'am, I don't know what you're going to think about this, but our Maggie hasn't aged a whole lot. Hepsey and I, we joke around that she has a portrait hidden in that gallery that does the agin' for her, like that Dorian Gray fellah in the story. And she keeps her hair dark enough, with just wings of snow, Hepsey calls 'em. But you'll see for yourself."
"An ageless kidnapping victim. Hmmm. . . Any other unusual cases you'd like to warn me about, before I go plowing through these files?"
"Oh, scads and scads, Sheriff Lacey, until about 1971 or thereabouts. For some reason, all the bad stuff seemed to come to an end. Sometimes it just works out that way. Sheriff Patterson, George, he passed on a few years back, used to say trouble in Collinsport had a history of coming in cycles, but I think we were just damned lucky. Now have yourself a good read, and when you're ready, I'll boot up the Compaq."
Well, at least there was no rush to get this stuff on floppy disks. Mary Beth read and read, and became more anxious. Maggie's ordeal had, at least, come to a kind of closure, but there were other abductions of other girls by other perverts, including the disappearance of a Collins heiress at the hands of a huge, deformed man, who later paralyzed a deputy and killed Maggie's father. There were stories of a hairy man who behaved like a rabid animal, who killed several women and his own brother-in-law before getting shot by the Sheriff, and a really mysterious killer who dripped a peculiar ooze at his crime scenes--- he, she or IT had killed a Sheriff who'd taken over from the previous holder of the title, one George Patterson, who'd then returned to the position until his death in 1987. There was a lab report full of confoundment over the inability to analyze samples of the slimy stuff. There were more confinements for insanity, folllowed by miracle cures. There was even a spate of grave-robbing! Then, as Job said, all came to a screeching halt by early 1971. Afterward, there were just the standard DWI's, assaults, a couple of very explicable homicides.
Crazy stories, Mary Beth tried to reassure herself, crazy stories to chase small-town boredom for an inbred population that refused to look beyond its borders. Two things she noticed, though; one was that the reports were written with extreme efforts at precise detail, as if the previous sheriffs feared that a future reader wouldn't believe the stories. The second, and probably most important thing was that ALL the stories had, at their center, the involvement of the Collins family. It went back beyond Roger Collins's accident, all the way back to when his sister's husband had left town in 1949, or so she said, and she sacked all but one of her servants, who later went off his head and committed murder. Turned out this sister, Elizabeth, thought she had KILLED her husband, until an extoritionist tried to marry her, and the truth finally came tumbling out. Years later, the wastrel husband had returned, only to perish at the hands (?) of the ooze killer!
Mary Beth made up her mind, then and there, she would have to find some pretext upon which to visit this family around which so much controversy swirled. "Lucky me, I could be in Hyannisport with the Kennedys!" she thought. Now THAT would be the life, she thought; stepping out with Harvey to a trendy restaurant for Cape Cod Cranberry coolers (just half-a-one for him, though--- didn't want to mess with his medications), shopping for what her late mother used to call "dust collectors" in a dozen cute giftshops; walking a peaceful beach without crashing, thrashing waves like the ocean nearby, and picking up shells with Christine when she came to visit, like a couple of little girls. . . Alice could date a lifeguard, heck, even become one herself, she was that good a swimmer, and pretty level-headed generally, except for whatever madness made her get all those piercings. And all for the price of giving traffic tickets those dreadful Kennedy drivers, and clueless tourists, and dealing with gift-shop break-ins.
No "Old Cape Cod", no careless Kennedys, no cranberry drinks, just
a mansion chock-full of possibly murderous yet tee-totalling eccentrics named Collins,
Mary Beth thought now, as she sat in her kitchen, still dark save for a small light
over the stove. She glanced at the clock: almost 5:15. "Wonder how Harv's
doing now?" she fretted.
* * * * * * * * *
Harvey was beginning to
feel a little anxious himself. At first, he had reveled in the rather noisy early-morning
"peace" of the forest, chirping birds, chattering squirrels, trees rustling
as though elephants were coming through. Yet, he had been told there were no predators
more dangerous than foxes. "Not THESE days, anyway," the youthful clerk
at the Bait 'n' Tackle Shop had said with a wink, the previous afternoon.
"What is THAT supposed to mean?" Harvey had demanded.
"Oh, so you haven't heard about our 'haunted woods"? Must be a newcomer to these parts," the clerk said.
Real rocket scientist they have working here, Harvey thought, doesn't he notice the different accent? Wonder how closely HIS parents are related! "Go on, I bet you're just dying to scare another tourist," he taunted.
"I haven't seen too many yet--- only been on the job for a week or so. Not that I'd go out of my way to scare 'em, or anything, it's bad for business," the young clerk smirked. "There WAS a lot of hoo-doo goin' on back around 1970, before my time, but it's nothing now. I think what we had around was a buncha them hippies hidin' up there, doin' sick-crazy things to stupid girls who went parkin' with their boyfriends, or somethin'. Anyway, that was all over years ago---"
"They ever catch those creeps?"
"Maybe. I think they got one. But it's pretty safe there now, you know, even hippies get OLD. Still, some folks say, late at night, there's spirits, make a lot of racket. Or maybe UFO's. Haven't had to call in Mulder and Scully from the 'X-Files' yet, though." The clerk grinned at his own joke.
Harvey countered, "Well, I DON'T think the town has to go to all that trouble. The new Sheriff won't miss a trick, believe me. Even the UFO's will think twice."
"Who, that LADY, was a cop in New York, I hear?" The young man sounded incredulous. "Shoot, if Sheriff Patterson couldn't stop anything, and he was pretty smart---"
"My WIFE is one of the two smartest women I know. Three, if you count when my daughter turns 21." Harvey could FEEL his face form a smirk. And it felt really good.
"Your-your WIFE is the new Sheriff? Oh, man--- I'm sorry, Mr.--- Lacey, that's it---"
"No problem, I can see where someone in a REALLY small town like YOURS might have some OLD-fashioned ideas." Harvey paid for his new fishing equipment and, as he turned to leave, said, "Thanks for calling my wife a 'lady', anyway. And I'll remember about all those ghosts--- though with that attitude about female cops, if we have to call the X-Files, Mulder better leave Scully home, eh?" The shop door shut behind Harvey before he could hear whether the clerk made a reply.
Harvey was no longer as sure of himself, now that he was smack in the middle of the "great outdoors". The crush of eager fishermen he had anticipated did not materialize. Maybe they were all spooked by the "haunted woods" story, he thought. Then he remembered, it was Monday, a lot of them had to work, but there were always those who would play "hooky", and surely, some retired men like himself--- they were probably waiting until there was more light in the sky.
So he busied himself with tying on lures and other bait, and made a cast into what he had been told was a well-stocked stream. He sat quietly enough for about a half-hour, but when he hadn't gotten a nibble by then, he got restless. Fishing was BORING as Hell when one was alone and couldn't even crack open a beer, he realized. Taking his heart pills just didn't cut it.
Another half-hour had gone by, and he was just about to give it up, when he thought he heard rustling in the brush, besides the ever-present breeze in the tree-tops. Probably a fox, Harvey thought, then got nervous--- those things could be carrying rabies!
He picked up his fishing kit, and was backing away from the bushes, when something big and dark swooped at him from the nearest one, and knocked him over! A bat? his dazed mind asked--- how could that BE, bats around here were only the size of birds like pigeons; this appeared to be bigger than a raven, yet he KNEW it wasn't a raven. . .
Harvey didn't know how long he had been lying on the ground, when he felt someone
helping him to sit up. "Thanks, I'll be okay--" he began, when he looked
up at his rescuer --- and felt his heart begin to lurch, squirm, and churn. My God,
he thought, I'm going to die, I HAVE to be dying--- "You're--you're ME!"
Harvey gasped at the mirror image of himself that gazed down
with a terrified
expression. "You're a FETCH!"
"What's a 'fetch'? Is that a name for a thief?" the other man wailed in what Harvey knew was HIS voice. "I was tryin' to HELP you---"
Even in his discomfort, Harvey began to realize that this double of his was just as upset by the resemblance as he was. "Listen, just dig me out the vial of nitro from my tackle box, and I'll tell you," he whispered. The other man did exactly as he was told. At least he wasn't a sadist, who would ignore Harvey's request--- or an illiterate. He found the correct medication among the several vials Harvey had brought.
As soon as Harvey took the pill and knew that his heart was settling down, he explained. "When I was a kid, we went out on Halloween with this kid who spent half the night telling us these really awful stories about banshees and fetches. A 'fetch' is supposed to be your OWN spirit, and when you or someone sees it, it means you're going to die within the next year. Funny, even though I never believed in that stuff, and forgot about it for fifty years, it popped right back into my head when I saw YOU!"
"I'm not a ghost," the other man, now calmer, replied. "Though sometimes I feel invisible like one, then, when people notice me, about as welcome as one."
"Look, don't take what I just said personally," Harvey pleaded. "I have this bad ticker, and after that bat or whatever knocked me for a loop, everything seemed to be crashing to a stop---"
"I know what you mean. I almost died a couple of times, myself. I was even shot, years ago."
"That's terrible!" Harvey said sympathetically. "I hope they got whoever who did it!"
The other man shook his head. "It was the Sheriff's deputies, shot me."
Harvey almost needed another pill, hearing THAT news. This must be one of those "old hippies" the clerk was talking about. "Well, um, thanks for your help, but I have to be going, now," he said as he rose to his feet. The other man also rose, and followed him. "Listen, buddy," Harvey said, fear filling his voice, "I think you should know, in case you're planning something, my wife is the new sheriff around here. And she was a cop--- a detective---a GOOD one--- back in New York City."
"New York? Oh--" the "fetch" faltered. "Please, don't
tell her about me. I did a stretch back in
New York, a long time ago. I was
just following to make sure you were all right! I don't want trouble with anyone."
He sounded like he was about to CRY! "I've been pretty good for 30 years,
just ask around town! Nobody likes me much, but they can't complain, either."
Harvey now found himself in a peculiar position, having to reassure an ex-con that nothing bad would happen to him! "Sorry, sorry, I won't tell her. There's nothing to tell--- I doubt I'll tell her about needing the nitro, she'll just get mad at me for coming out this early and getting myself sick again." He smiled. "Besides, I don't even know your name!"
"Willie. Willie Loomis. Formerly of Nowheresville, Missouri--- then, for a long time before I ended up in Collinsport, from Everywhere you can think of, including the 'seven seas'."
"Navy? Merchant Marine?" Harvey asked.
"No, just shipping companies and---and stuff. But since I came here, I've been working for the big family in town, the Collinses, but mostly for Barnabas Collins."
"Well, I'm Harvey Lacey. Formerly of New York, formerly in the contruction business, and now a gentleman of leisure--- well, when my wife--- Mary Beth--- doesn't need stuff done at home while SHE's at work. Since all our kids are grown and a couple are on their own, that leaves me plenty of time for fishing--- or at least, TRYING to fish. The darn things just don't seem to be biting this morning. You married, Willie?"
Willie's head drooped visibly as he replied, "No, but I guess you can see why. There WAS someone I WOULD have--- but this is a small town, and, well, memories go a long way around here."
"Do you mind if I ask, why you stayed on here, after all this trouble that got you shot?"
"You know what, Harvey? It's been such a long time since I thought about it, even I'm not sure why. But it's not too bad most of the time. And I got the day off to fish--- nobody at the Cannery did! Even though I had to do a little errand first."
"At five in the morning, your Boss makes you do errands, Willie?"
"Not TOO often. But he's been kind of upset lately. I can't talk about it."
Harvey said, amiably, "Well, we could stay and fish together, if you want. Boy, won't it fake everyone out, seeing the two of US together! I mean, you're a little thinner, your hair's got a bit more color left in it, and you have that sad look on your mug, but otherwise, we could pass for twins! Yet I KNOW I don't have a twin ANYTHING. My late mother was never out of New York State in her life, and I don't think my late father ever went to Missouri."
"That's just Collinsport for you," Willie replied, brightening. "A lot of people here have been mistaken for---for someone else. I think it's something in the water."
"Maybe I should throw back any fish I manage to catch, then. I know at least
ONE person who would be happy about THAT."
* * * * * * * * * *
6:45 AM back at the Lacey homestead--- Mary Beth was having her final argument with her daughter before she took her to Collinsport Regional High School. (The school, largely financed by Collins interests, served several, equally-small, nearby communities.) The exasperated mother wondered whatever happened to the slight, tractable child who used to hide from controversy--- in her place was a sometimes-feisty rebel upon whom years of living with two loud, opinionated older parents were finally showing their influence.
"Alice, I told you, take off the lip-rings and nose-rings! The earrings you can leave, even though five in one ear and four in the other looks ridiculous as it is. There's NO excuse--- I know I wasn't paying attention for the month before we got up here, but my God, girl, if you keep those things, there WILL be permanent holes in your face LONG after you grow out of this phase! As God is my witness, NOBODY will hire you, even with a trunk full of degrees!"
Alice was playing it sullen--- though she sounded weary of the act. "Maybe I don't WANT a job that needs all those degrees! Maybe I WANT to be a truckstop waitress, or a line worker in the cannery, or catch lobsters, or whatever they do around here. Maybe I'll be a lumberjack!"
"Oh, PLEASE, Alice, they just don't need that many lumberjacks anymore. I WANTED you to get a little job at the Super Store place for a little pocket money, but even THEY have a dress code, which I guess that school DOESN'T have. Or do you even know?"
Alice was about to make her final smart-assed comeback, when the door-bell rang. "Oh, great, just as we're out the door!" Mary Beth complained.
Alice peeked out a small window from which she could see the front porch. "Jehovah's Witnesses, Mom. Please don't trade me in for a subscription to 'The Watchtower'!"
"I haven't time for this---" Mary Beth yanked open the door with a decisive motion. "Now look here, you--- CHRISTINE!"
"Now look here you WHAT!" Christine Cagney barked back, then embraced her friend. Mary Beth suddenly clung to the blonde woman fiercely. "Jesus, Mary Beth, is that your weapon or are you just happy to see me?" Christine said with a wink.
Mary Beth withdrew, and stood back, resplendant, more or less, in her Sheriff's uniform, sharp six-pointed star badge and holster, and complete with matching leather bombers' jacket. "Welcome to the Wild, Wild West," she joked falteringly, "the wild southwest coast of Maine, anyway. My God, Christine, I wasn't expecting you TODAY--- I thought you couldn't make it till the weekend. And a MONDAY, no less. You didn't lose your job, did you?"
"No, no, I'm entitled to four weeks, and He Who Must Be Obeyed, aka the new D.A.whom you ditched me with, insists that I use them at off-season times. I'm sorry I came without calling, but I was just going to stop in on my way to Quebec, then circle back down on schedule. I see I came at a bad time---" Christine glanced, then began to to GLARE at Alice "---Young woman, WHAT do you have growing out of your nose and lips? And what is THAT, a Christmas display in your ears? Take it down already, it's just past Easter!"
"Hello to you too, Aunt Christine," Alice said meekly, as she began to pluck the rings and studs from her face. "I'm just going to leave two earrings each in the ears, okay?"
"HOW did you manage THAT miracle?" Mary Beth asked incredulously. "I've been doing everything short of ripping them off with my bare hands!"
"It's all in the delivery. Counteracts that pouty 'Harvey' look she's learned to throw you at the last minute," Christine smirked. "I love your husband almost as much as my brother, Mary Beth, but I find myself more resistant to male pouting, even Harvey's, as the years go on."
"YOU, resistant to male ANYTHING--- that's almost like news I've been waiting to hear forever, but is it GOOD news?" Mary Beth suddenly glanced at the clock. "It's after seven, already! Oh, my God, we'll be late for Alice's first day of school--- a FINE example for the new sheriff to set--- Christine, are you in a big hurry for Quebec? Please say you'll ride with us, then we can catch up."
"Sure, give me the grand tour. I don't exactly have reservations up there, I was just going to drop in and HOPE there's a vacancy."
"Now THAT sounds like the spontaneous Christine we all know and love,"
Mary Beth said as she herded her chastened daughter and newly-arrived friend to her
Sheriff's car.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Harvey and Willie had a very satisfactory morning of angling. Willie, with his years of experience, knew the best places to fish. Soon he had three trout, and Harvey had four. "That's enough, thanks," Harvey said finally. "It's just me and my wife who'll eat them. Our daughter is going through a vegetarian phase right now."
"I cook for Barn-- Mr. Collins, and his son Jeremy, so this is exactly right," Willie replied. "Though I might save Mr. Collins's fish in the freezer--- he's not feeling too well right now."
"You seem very concerned," Harvey observed. "It must be serious. Has he been sick long?"
"Yes, it's serious, and yes, he's been sick for a while, all right. His late wife was a doctor, and she used to care for him, but he doesn't trust other doctors."
"Well, I hope he gets better soon, for your sake, so you won't have to go on those five AM errands." Harvey was packed up, and Willie accompanied him to his car.
Willie stopped suddenly. "Hey, Harvey, can I ask you something, before you go?"
"I guess, if it means setting up another date to fish. This was more fun than I expected, more fun than I've had since I left my other friends back in New York." Harvey was taken aback by his new friend's query.
"What does it feel like to have kids? I mean, not HAVING them, but having them growing up where you see them every day and talk to them as a Dad and so on?"
"Boy, what that a bolt out of the blue, Willie. I thought you said that kind of thing wasn't in the cards for you. Besides, don't you remember what it was like when you were a kid with YOUR father?"
Willie's face darkened. "I don't like to talk about that. My Dad was pure Hell before he left us, and my Mom was so poor she had to put us in these foster homes. I got out of there when I was sixteen."
"Jesus, that sounds a little like what happened in my wife's family--- her old man flew the coop, then came back and got sick, but he died before he became a real burden. I never thought I would think such a thing, but thank God he passed away when he did." Harvey had to take some deep breaths, while reliving THESE memories. "As for your other question, well, it's easy and hard to be a father. The good days, and we DID have more good days than bad, it was kind of fun. My older boys grew up without a lot of fancy stuff, like we did. We couldn't afford much, till they were older. I did more stuff WITH them than the average dad, because I couldn't work for some time, then there were times there was no work, and I did maintenance right in our own apartment building. We fought over this and that, but they turned out okay, and they'll be dropping in, up here, soon. Now, my DAUGHTER is on her SECOND computer, and even though she's a good girl, she's more trouble than the boys put together, a real weasel. I tell her off, but she makes pouty little 'Mary Beth' faces at me, then I cave in."
Willie looked wistful during this recitation. "Well, the closest I ever came to raising any kid was helping with Jeremy--- Mr. Collins and Dr. Collins, that was Julia, his wife, were older when he was born, and they were such serious people, so I would play with him, catch and stuff, built him a swing set, and I took him to see his godmother and HER daughter and watched out for them. Especially when the little girl's Dad and Jeremy's mother died a year apart. But I would NEVER give them any advice, even if I had some."
" 'Advice is the gift that keeps giving, because almost nobody takes it', that's what MY Mom always used to say," Harvey answered. "You probably did just what I would have done in your place, if that makes you feel any better." He got in his car. "You'll have to visit us some time. I doubt Mary Beth would bite the head off a genuine, sincere, rehabilitiated ex-con. And it would be fun to give her a jolt when she sees the two of us together."
"Maybe sometime soon, if Barnabas gets better," Willie said. "But
when we go fishing again, let's wait till the sun's fully up."
* * * * *
* * * * *
Alice had to ask directions to the office, which was NOT conveniently located at the entrance of this extremely large school, to report the reason for her tardiness. She tapped the shoulder of a tall, strawberry-blond boy at his locker, whose back was turned to her. He replied, without looking at her at first. Alice thought he had the most pleasant, most even tone of voice she had ever heard from a boy of her age. She wanted to prolong the contact, and wanted to see if his face matched the voice. She tapped again, and this time he glanced back.
His eyes were soft puppy-dog brown. His face was finely chiseled, and marred by just a few discreet little pimples. But he seemed annoyed. "What do you want NOW?" he demanded, his hands still digging for something in the disorderly locker. Still, he had that fine voice.
"Sorry, I just wanted to thank you. And introduce myself--- I'm Alice C. Lacey, today's my first day of school."
"Well, Alice C. Lacey, I'm Elliot J. Collins. Today marks my first WEEK here, but don't go asking me for more directions. I still get lost too--- this place is an absolute MAZE."
"What, you're one of THE Collinses of Collinsport?"
"One the the ever-increasing number, I'm afraid--- my mother is out to replenish our family tree, I believe. I have five younger siblings, one older, and one more due any minute."
Alice was enchanted--- This Elliot could just have said "sisters and brothers." But now she was curious. "If you're RICH, why are you HERE?" she asked, then hung back. What business was it of hers, anyway?
"Have no fear, I wasn't thrown out of some exclusive prep school. My parents--- my mother--- TOOK me out. She said that I really had to learn something about you plebians." He smiled mischievously at that instant, and Alice knew she had found the love of her life. "Seriously," Elliot continued, "I'll be expected to take over the family business someday, or at least play some part in it, so it will probably pay to get to know some of those who might end up working for me in the future."
"That's awesome--- wait till I tell Mom. She's been curious--- well, interested in your folks since they lobbied to get her chosen as Sheriff."
"Lacey--- I KNEW that name was familiar. Well, I'll have to get Mother and Father to invite your family for dinner, before Mother is laid-in again. But first, you and I will have to get to know each other better."
"Just like THAT?" Alice said, bewildered. Oh be still, my heart, she thought.
"It IS what YOU want, isn't it?" Elliot asked, sounding blase.
"Why, you--- that's PRESUMPTUOUS!. What, are you so popular already, you EXPECT every girl who talks to you, to want a date with you?"
"Not every girl. Just persistent ones like you, who don't just settle for directions to the office", the boy replied evenly. "Even if they wear one-too-many pairs of earrings," he added. "I saw a girl busted for multiple studs on my first day. A word to the wise should be sufficient. Miss Jennings, the Principal, is a stickler for that kind of thing. And I observe holes in your lip and nose. I hope you haven't done what I THINK you did, but most of the regular guys HATE to kiss a girl with 'fish-hooked-lips'." He extracted the book he'd been seeking, and said, "Hurry on now to the office. Miss Jennings might get hard on you for tardiness. She has a reputation for pickiness. I WILL be seeing you at lunch? And DO skip the bus--- I brought my car. It's a nice grown-up type car, so your worthy mother won't be scandalized."
"What---what?" Alice sputtered at this utterly self-confident, self-contained individual. All of a sudden, she had a friend and a date and a ride all rolled into one, and she had said very little of substance herself!
"Oh, relax, Alice C. Lacey. Look at how much work I've just saved you. A nice girl like yourself would have to go through the motions of proving yourself to everyone before you even HAD a date, and that date would probably be with a 'hands-on' jock type, who wouldn't understand half the words you use. You, in your struggle to hang on to him, would sink to HIS level--- he wouldn't rise to YOURS. Under different circumstances, it would take MONTHS to attract the sort of guy I believe you'd REALLY enjoy spending time with, namely, without boasting, myself. And by then, I would have been tied up, probably with an ambitious cheerleader who pretended to understand ME. The fact that we found each other so quickly is serendipitous, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess dreams really DO come true," Alice said with a touch of sarcasm. Everything he said was true, but he was rubbing her nose in it--- or was he? He didn't seem mean, didn't seem like he was trying to coerce her, didn't appear crazy-obsessed, or any of the negatives she had been taught by her parents, but mostly by her mother's experienced friend, to avoid like the plague in a male. Oh, well, she thought, we'll give it a try for today--- nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it WAS a lucky break. "Okay, I'll see you at lunch then, if I ever find the cafeteria in this place."
Alice trotted briskly to the office, removing one more pair of earrings as she went. The secretary was taking down her name and excuse, when a petite woman of about forty slid in quietly and looked over her shoulder. "Lacey, the Sheriff's daughter?" the woman asked in an interestingly husky voice. To Alice, she sounded like that movie actress, Kathleen Turner.
"Yes, Ma'am," Alice replied. "Are you Miss Jennings?"
"I'm afraid so, Lacey. I see this is your first day, and you're pretty late. How did the Sheriff let this happen?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Jennings, but while we were getting ready to leave, my mother's former partner from New York dropped in, but we got out as soon as we could."
"There IS a school bus, Lacey. You know how to use them."
"I'm sorry, Miss Jennings, my mother wanted to drive me in just this once, for the first day---"
"You're twenty minutes late. I'm sorry, but you're now on probation for detention. One more tardy, and it's a VERY dry hour in a basement room, instead of cafeteria or study hall, and a blot on your permanent record. And let me see. . . Are those extra holes in your ears? I hope I notice them closing after a few weeks. And as for the baggy pants--- lose 'em. I don't need any lawsuits from parents whose darlings trip down our stairs in those things. Not even the Sheriff. Why does she let you wear them, anyway?"
"I--I'm not sure, Miss Jennings. But she's very big on letting me face the consequences of my actions."
"Right. So, I have to be incovenienced, putting you to rights. My God, it's a good thing we don't have a lot of crime in this town. No doubt that's her laissez-faire policy on criminal activity?"
"NO, MA'AM!" Alice shouted. "My mother was one of the BEST cops
in New York, and she'll
do a FABULOUS job as the Sheriff of this dinky, one-horse---"
"You've just bought yourself a lunchtime detention, Lacey. You eat in the basement, then sit quietly, no talking, nothing, for the rest of the half-hour."
Alice felt tears stinging in their struggle to burst forth, but kept them in. "I'm sorry, Miss Jennings, I just didn't think you were being fair to my mother. And now, SHE's going to kill me. Detention on my first day!"
"Look, Lacey, I don't have TIME to consider everyone's precious little needs. I have a school with 600 students to run here. So, I try to run things in a way the military might admire. But it's not a military school, and once you know the rules, then everything is easier for everybody. I figure, go hard the first or second time, then we have VERY little recidivism after. You'll get used to it after a while. Appreciate it, even."
NOT, Alice answered mentally. Even her mother had mellowed out with age, though she sometimes still felt it needful to put up a fight, like this morning. But the girl bit her tongue, forced herself to say good morning, and went to homeroom, all the while planning her strategy. "I'll have to talk to Dad when I get home, FIRST thing," she thought.
Meanwhile, Miss Jennings snatched up some papers from her "Incoming" basket, but before she stalked back to her office, the secretary said bluntly, "Amy, you were TOO hard on that girl. First day for her--- it'll be enough of an adjustment for her after New York. And this WON'T sit well with the Sheriff. Job tells me she's tough as YOU, but she IS fair. We could have a to-do between yourself, the Sheriff, and the Collinses."
"Hepsey, MUST I keep reminding you? The Collinses are MY relatives, not the Laceys'."
"After all this time, it's still hard to believe, Amy, but you milked it
pretty well. You got to go to that fancy Smith College on their wallets, after just
being another townie urchin like the rest of us.
I remember those brothers of
yours, and where are they now?" Hepsey Woodard asked rhetorically.
Amy's round face crumpled. "Tom--- dead from whatever crazy blood-sickness was being spread around thirty years ago. And Chris---" This time, she choked on the name. Christopher, caught out during a full moon, shot properly with silver bullets by Sheriff Patterson, who had finally learned his werewolf secret. And who died the next morning, with his shattered wife Sabrina and teenaged sister by his side. It was only the influence of the Collinses that kept the awful truth from reaching the media. While Patterson, satisfied at the removal of the threat to the community, was willing to go along with the cover-up, still, Amy bore an animus toward the whole institution of the Sheriff's office. Sabrina had tried to reason with her, but Amy slapped George Patterson when he dared to attend Chris's funeral. Then she turned around, and slapped the deputy who tried to restrain her.
Twenty-seven years gone, and the pain, not to mention the sense of outrage at ANY sheriff, still burned in Amy's gut. But she forced herself to calm, and said, "Maybe you're right, Hepsey. I DO get carried away. It's the stress. I keep asking the Board of Education for more vice principals, to divide this school into a house system, and they're a bunch of stubborn old fools. I wonder why they keep getting re-elected."
"Why don't you ask your relatives, the Collinses? They giveth, yet they taketh away."
"I should ask them to replace YOU, Hepsey, but I need the reality check once
in a while. I WILL re-think my actions against Alice Lacey, though. Carry on."
Back in her office, Amy unlocked a big drawer, and took out a bottle of vodka.
She poured some into a paper cup from her water-cooler dispenser, added some water,
and sipped it as she perused the stack of papers.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"Well, Mary Beth, I have to congratulate you," Christine said, as she surveyed the Sheriff's office, which was bathed in light from a large, but barred window. "You finally got an office with a view, even if it's just Main Street."
"It's kind of pretty for a police station, I think," Mary Beth replied. "This part of the building is almost two hundred years old, and was last redecorated in 1900! They just keep re-painting."
"Just as long as the PAINT wasn't around in 1900, the lead and all that. So, what do you do for excitement, after all the adventures back in New York? Hold checkpoints for drunk drivers on Saturday nights? Bust up fights at that cheesy old Blue Whale place? God, remember how much we hated that petty crap when we were in uniform? And now, you're back in one!"
"Well, at least HERE, it gets some kind of respect, Christine. And I was so tired of 'adventures'. Plus, HERE I'm pretty much my own boss, 'SHE who must be obeyed'. For once, I have real authority as well as responsibility. And you'd probably flip if I showed you my paycheck--- this town is richer than it looks. Though I'll have to show you some of the fascinating records from thirty years back, and even further, the turn of the century, some ancient scribbles I copied at the library. Boring as this backwater is NOW, there was some hair-raising stuff going on years ago." Mary Beth began describing some of the incredible events she'd read about.
"Vampires and werewolves and ghosts, oh, my!" Christine dead-panned in response. "It's pretty hard to believe---"
"Yeah, it is for me, too, but the late Sheriff Patterson, who, it seems, was Sheriff for Life until he died 13 years ago, and my immediate predecessor, who was HIS deputy and went on to some cushy job in Augusta, kept meticulous records. They just don't strike me as having been inbred crazies who made up stories. My deputy, Job Woodard, had a father who DIED while investigating this stuff. He said that Patterson's theory was that trouble in Collinsport runs in cycles, roughly one bad patch every twenty to thirty years. For some reason, this makes me nervous. . . It's like I got here just as the warranty was running out."
"But NOTHING's happened yet, if it's meant to happen at all, has it?" Christine asked sensibly. "I think the problem here is that you gave up a job full of challenges, tiring as they were, in what you saw as a dire need for a rest. And now, you're restored, but you can't go back to where you were, so you're borrowing trouble, with interest."
"Christine," Mary Beth asked quietly, "how many times have my intuitions been wrong, about the job, anyway?"
"Well, to be honest--- I could count them on the fingers of one hand. But that's big-city stuff. You need to adjust to small-town rhythms."
"Job keeps telling me the same thing--- I have to learn how they do things in Collinsport. Why should my standards be different for Collinsport? Everybody used to pick on me for being as self-righteous as a small-town schoolmarm, don't deny it, I KNOW they did. Yet here I AM in a small town, and I don't fit in!"
Christine was just about to reply, when Job Woodard came in from the back of the building, where the holding cells were. "Morning, Sheriff, Ma'am," he said.
" 'Sheriff Ma'am'," Christine repeated. "Has a nice ring to it. Better than some of the names they called US back home."
Job gazed at the blonde woman with frank curiosity. "Excuse me?" he
said. Mary Beth quickly introduced them. "My, are there a LOT of women police
and detectives and such in New York?"
he asked.
Christine laughed, "Not when WE first came in, Job. In our former precinct, we were almost the only female cops, and then, we were the only female detectives for some years, before we became bureaucratic functionaries with guns. Usually had the ladies' room all to ourselves, anyway."
Job looked at Mary Beth and cleared his throat. "Well, if that was the case, I'm sure they had the BEST. Now, Sheriff, Ma'am, we just brought in a peeper. He's in the back. I think you'll want to see THIS one, special." He turned back toward the entrance to the holding area, and beckoned.
As he disappeared from view, Christine teased in a whisper, "Job acts like he's got a crush on you, Mary Beth."
"Don't be ridiculous," Mary Beth whispered back irritably. "He's married--- to someone named Hepzibah, secretary at the High School."
"I can just imagine what a small-town 'Hepzibah' must be like."
"Very nice, in fact, he has a picture of the wife--- calls her 'Hepsey'--- and their little Bible belt of children on his desk. She's very pretty. Plus, he knows I'm married, obviously."
"NOBODY is more obviously married than YOU, Mary Beth. You all but have it tatooed to your forehead." Christine patted her friend's shoulder. "Can I have a look at this 'special' perp, Sheriff Ma'am?"
"It's a voyeur, so maybe it's someone YOU know," Mary Beth teased back. "Sure, come on, your expertise will impress the Hell out of Job."
The holding cell they sought was close to the back wall of the building. This wing of the police station was of fairly recent, mid-1970's vintage. While it boasted all the modern amenities, it lacked the character of the office area, most fitting for its function.
The prisoner, a heavyset older man, sat with his face to the wall. He was sighing heavily, maybe even weeping--- all Job, Mary Beth, and Christine could see was his plaid-shirted back. Job told him to turn around.
As they glimpsed his profile in the gloomy light, Mary Beth gasped. Christine remarked, "You were right, it sure IS someone that I know, and you, too, rather WELL."
Job said, "What are you ladies talking about?"
Mary Beth, her face white, forced out the words: "You--you arrested--- Harvey? My HUSBAND? For PEEPING? He was supposed to be out FISHING!" She felt ill--- once, years ago, Harvey and their friends at the 14th precinct had played a similar joke on her, and she didn't think it was funny THEN. She didn't know WHAT to think now!
"Your HUSBAND, Ma'am?" Job asked in amazement. "This is that fellow I was telling you about, Willie Loomis."
"He's- he's a dead-ringer for my husband! I keep forgetting to put his picture
on my desk, so you could
see--- my God, Harvey CAN'T have a twin brother, and
we NEVER knew it!"
Job told Loomis to stand up in the light. Christine studied him carefully, and said, "Take it easy, Mary Beth, he isn't EXACTLY like Harvey. Willie's hair's got some traces of blond in it, he appears to weigh less, and is more outdoorsy-looking. Their eye colors are even somewhat different--- Harvey's are pretty dark, slate-blue, while this one's sky-blue. Plus, Harvey looks happier on his worst days."
Mary Beth had regained a semblence of professional calm. "I'm sorry, Job, Christine, really. I'm even sorry for YOU, Loomis---but not VERY. What are the particulars here, Job?"
"Well, it seems that one Mark Wilkins, on his way to work at the Cannery, saw Loomis, here, in the yard of Maggie Shaw's home around 4:30 AM, trying to look through a window, presumably at her daughter, Vicki, who, we later discovered, got up that early to finish grading some papers. Well, anyway, Wilkins called it in on his cell phone, and Officer Hallett searched for several hours before he picked Loomis up just a half-hour ago. He also had his partner check on Vicki, who was alone due to her mother's being in Ellsworth overnight. The girl couldn't believe her mother's friend would do such a fool thing. Loomis came up with some cockeyed story that he was worried about her---"
"I'm ALWAYS worried about Maggie and Vicki," Willie protested. "They know me. I just didn't want to get THEM worried, so I just gave a look-see---"
"Right, Willie," Job said, shaking his head. "Just like you did thirty years back. It got you shot and nearly killed THEN. You're lucky Hallett didn't shoot you today!"
"I'm sorry, I was just going to look, then go---"
"That's what they ALL say!" Mary Beth snapped. "Then they keep coming back, and wanting more, and what happens sometimes, they don't just stop at LOOKING. . . I'd hate to have to send an old man to prison, especially for something like THIS--- they'd eat you alive. But, considering your record, you're in serious trouble here, sir."
"You DON'T understand. Ask your husband, he might---"
"HARVEY! What does HE have to do with YOU?"
Willie shook as he spoke. "I met him this morning at the trout stream, after---"
Mary Beth shook with anger. "He'd BETTER be okay---"
Christine shushed Mary Beth. Today, it seemed, it was HER turn to play "Good cop". "Look--- Willie? Just tell us everything, from A to Z. You were already apprised of your rights?"
"Yes, Ma'am, and even if they hadn't done it, I remember them well enough. I was in the woods. My Boss, that's Mr. Barnabas Collins, gave me the day off to go fishing, and I wanted to get there early, after I checked on Vicki. When I was there, a bat flew into Mr. Lacey's face, and he fell over. I helped him get up, and when he saw that we looked alike, he kind of got scared and his heart bothered him. So he asked me to get his medicine, and when he felt better, we talked and fished. He left at about quarter-to-eight, I guess to home."
Mary Beth immediately pulled her cell phone from her belt, and punched in the number with nervous fingers. The relief in her voice when she was able to say "Hi, Harv," echoed in the holding area. To everyone's surprise, she didn't announce the real reason for her call. "I'm not really busy now, and I was wondering if you'd caught anything. . . Almost caught a bat? THAT'S funny. . . FOUR trout? Well, that will be GREAT, because it seems we have a houseguest, a few days early. . . That's right, she's with me now. . . So, did you meet anyone out there?" When Mary Beth was finished, she announced to the others, "Well, Harvey corroborated your story up to that point. He even said you had a little talk about fatherhood, of all things! He said you DID seem worried, but about your employer."
"Yes, Sheriff, Ma'am, Barnabas isn't well right now, but he let me have the day. . . Anyway, something made me go to check up on Maggie and Vicki. Maggie knows I'm her friend, and Vicki's."
Job said, "I wonder how they'll feel about that after today. Willie, just WHAT made you worry about a perfectly healthy, safe mother and daughter, that you had to sneak up and look in a window? It just doesn't make sense!"
"I can't explain--- it was just a FEELING---"
Mary Beth said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Loomis, but you'll have to do a LOT better than that if you expect to beat this charge. You haven't said anything to convince me that you had any business there. You're not RELATED to these women, and if you were such a great friend, you could have gone to their door and confronted them, AFTER calling, FIRST!"
Willie sputtered, "There's reasons---"
"Whatever they are, maybe you'd better save them for your attorney. He or she will know what to make of them. Have you contacted one yet?"
"No, but---" There was a knock at the entrance to the holding cells. Job went to answer it. He returned, followed by an attractive, well-dressed woman in her early fifties. Mary Beth noticed at once, the "wings of snow" at the temples of the woman's otherwise auburn coiffure. And something else--- "Dorian Gray," she thought. "Where can Harv and I get magic portraits like that, and how much of Alice's college fund would we need to spend?"
"Maggie--- Mrs. Shaw," Job began. "Why are you here? We have Willie well in hand. He won't be bothering you and Vicki for a while."
"My daughter called and told me all about the incident, Job. I believe there's been a mistake made here. I called my lawyer, Mr. Anthony Peterson, and we contacted Judge Garner. A simple fine will cover Willie's 'offense', which I assure you, was NOT what it appears to have been. I've already paid the fine, and Judge Garner was good enough to fax some documents to this office."
"Now, wait a minute," Mary Beth protested. "I'M the Sheriff here. This matter can't just be resolved by some phone calls between friends! Aren't you WORRIED about your daughter, Ma'am? Can you BELIEVE that he was trying to 'look out' for you two? I've been in law enforcement for more years than I like to think about, Ma'am, and of all the stories I've heard to excuse some kind of miscreant activity, Mr. Loomis's has to be one of the LAMEST."
"Perhaps, not to YOU, Sheriff--- Lacey, yes, I read about you in the Collinsport Star. But there are different relationships between people here. What may seem inexplicable to an outsider is no mystery to us. I believe Willie. At one time, of course, I was as mistrustful as you are now, and with good reason, but he has since proved his worth in many ways. He would no more hurt my daughter, or myself, than a Hindu would eat a cow."
Mary Beth grumbled to herself as she duly went out to the office, checked the
fax machine, and discovered the documents, all quite legal in appearance. She walked
right to the holding cell, unlocked it personally, and waved Willie out. He scurried
past her like a terrified mouse.
"Well, Mr. Loomis," the confounded
Sheriff said, "you're off the hook THIS time, but you WON'T get a second chance
if you try this nonsense again. Now, get out of here."
After all that had just gone down, Mary Beth half-expected Loomis and Mrs. Shaw
to exit, arm-in-arm! Instead, they seemed anxious to avoid each other, Willie darting
out well ahead of Maggie, who instead stopped to chat with Job, and introduced herself
to Christine, who said, later, "I can see what you mean. This is a rude hamlet,
all right. I expect you'll be meeting 'Larry and his brothers Darryl and Darryl'
before you're through. This HAS changed my vacation plans, though. Forget Quebec,
all the action's here! I can't WAIT to discover what the next two weeks will bring!"
*
* * * * * * * * * *
Elliot Collins waited at the bus exit for Alice. When she came out, tottering a little as if in shock, he said, "I can see it right now. Miss Jennings gave you Hell. I knew something was wrong when you didn't come to lunch."
"It was SO unfair," Alice mourned. "I didn't do ANYTHING---"
Elliot said "If it was any other girl, I would say you were, ahem, glossing over the facts, but you seem sincerely distressed. I believe you. Maybe I can do something for you. . . I hadn't told you yet, but Miss Jennings is my second cousin, twice-removed. I could ask my father to speak to her--- they used to be close friends at one time, and to be blunt, HIS influence got her the job."
"Oh, WOULD you, COULD you--- on second thought, maybe you shouldn't. My parents, Mom especially, will be upset enough without my trying to cop a favor from your family. Mom is almost TOO honest and upright, I think."
"Sounds like she and MY Mother would get on splendidly," Elliot laughed. "In fact, it was my mother's say-so that decided the choice of possible candidates for Sheriff. Your mother's reputation preceeded her." He lead the way to his car, a new, jet-black Saturn. "Well, are you going to let me drive you home for your date with destiny?"
"Maybe I shouldn't--- but the only boys who ever asked me to ride with them had cars that would shame a junkyard dog! This is too good to miss! The only thing neater than this would be if you had a Harley--- but then my folks would go ballistic if they caught me riding pillion on a motorcycle with a stranger. They didn't like it when my brother gave me rides, with a helmet and everything."
Alice sat quietly while Elliot, apparently not a speed demon like most boys his age, skillfully glided the Saturn around hairpin turns on some of Collinsport's older streets. He parked, briefly, in a pull-over spot near some bushes.
"My house is still two streets down," Alice said, a little nervously. Maybe Elliot WAS going to be trouble after all. Well, she'd been practicing some self-defense lessons her parents and Aunt Christine had insisted on---
"I just wanted to say good-bye the way we'd BOTH like to, without scrutiny," Elliot said, laying an arm over her shoulders and drawing her close. Alice didn't squirm away. And when he kissed her, she surprised herself by responding eagerly. "Let me guess," he teased. "Sweet sixteen and never been kissed? EVER?"
"No, not really. The other boys are just so disgusting and sloppy, and they always got P.O.'ed when I tried to tell them what I like. I didn't have to tell YOU anything," she purred happily. "I hope my parents let us go out, once they're done being mad at my detention."
When they got to the Lacey house, Alice jumped out of the car, and ran to the door, to avoid any confrontation over her riding alone with a boy they didn't know. Fortunately, she found her father deeply engrossed in cleaning and filleting his morning's catch. "They look very nice," the daughter said, "but they must have looked better alive."
Harvey didn't "rise to the bait." He simply asked, "How was your first day in that school?"
Alice knew this was the moment to trot out her notorious pout, tailored to suit whichever parent interrogated her. So she told the perfect truth, with sad sighs thrown in for good measure. Harvey, as she'd intended, was outraged. "That woman punished you for defending your MOM?"
"Oh, Dad," the girl fluttered, "don't let your blood pressure go up on MY account."
Mary Beth and Christine arrived home at 5:30, to the "fragrance" of baking fish. After Christine gave Harvey a squeeze ("What do I look like, a package of toilet paper?" he laughed), he began to explain, rather breathlessly, Alice's misfortune.
"Oh, God, Harv, she's taken you in again," his wife said, rolling her eyes. "She must have done SOMETHING---
Alice protested, "I was LATE, that's all. Plus, I had to take a minute to ask a boy for directions to the office. It's smack in the middle of the school! He was nice enough to warn me to take off a couple of earrings, too. Miss Jennings was going to let me off with a warning, then she brought up all this stuff about 'the Sheriff this' and 'the Sheriff that', like we did this on purpose! I just HAD to stick up for you, Mom." This time, she flashed the pout that made her resemble her father.
"That's a wild story, Alice," Christine commented, "but hey, truth sometimes IS stranger than fiction. Jennings. . . Jennings--- Mary Beth, wasn't that a name in the files, a murder suspect who was shot by the Sheriff years back? Maybe this principal is related--- probably IS, in such a small town."
"I know who she IS related to," Alice announced triumphantly. "The boy I was talking to, his name is Elliot Collins, yep, one of THOSE Collinses, said she's his second or third cousin. His DAD got her the job. And she was complaining about having too much work. If she wasn't so MEAN about it, I would have felt sorry for her."
"Well, I can sympathize with THAT," Mary Beth declared. "Especially dealing with crazy teen-agers all day. Maybe I should have a talk with this Miss Jennings." Just then the phone rang. She answered.
A man with a smooth baritone, who spoke with cultured accents, said, upon confirming her identity, "Ah Sheriff Lacey, this is David Collins. Perhaps you've heard of me?"
"Er-- yes, Mr. Collins," Mary Beth answered nervously. "It's a privilege to be working for y--- for this town. Anything I can do for you, sir? Any trouble at--- at the Estate?"
"No, no trouble. We have a good security system, with connections to your office if the need arises. I just wanted to address any problem you may have with Miss Amy Jennings, the principal of the High School. My son, Elliot, befriended your daughter, and discovered that Amy, who is a distant cousin of mine, had unjustly punished young Alice."
"We only have the word of two kids that it was unjust, Mr. Collins. Alice may have been insolent, when she thought Miss Jennings was insulting me, and when I was young, sir, that was grounds for a reprimand."
"A reprimand, NOT being forced to eat lunch in a dingy basement room, Sheriff Lacey!. Anyway, I DID have a little talk with my cousin, and I assure you she will deal with Alice, and, in fact any such minor disturbance with the students, more temperately."
"Really, sir, that's undermining the principal. According to what I hear, though, she seems to be overwhelmed in that big place. You should help her with HER problem, if you don't mind my saying, and I'll take care of my daughter's." Mary Beth calmed down and back-pedaled to keep the peace. This was, after all, the man who'd brought her here, who was paying her salary. "Still, Mr. Collins, I DO thank you for your concern. I hope you don't think I'm not appreciative---"
"Of course not, Sheriff. That's the sort of attitude Mrs. Collins--- Hallie--- would approve of. And we would also like you to know, we approve of our son's friendship with your daughter. I'm sure she's a fine girl. In fact, your family is invited to dinner at Collinwood--- Is Wednesday at eight too soon?"
"Well, I don't know, see, we have a guest from out of town--- my former partner from back in New York, in fact---"
"Amy mentioned something about that. Naturally, we'd welcome your guest as our own. Bring him along--"
"HER, sir. Her name is Christine Cagney."
"We'll look forward to seeing all of you, then."
Mary Beth hung up, crestfallen. Harvey said, "You look like you got steamrolled, honey."
"I NEVER heard you kiss up like THAT before, Mary Beth," Christine harrumphed.
"What can I do?" the beleagured Sheriff asked. "He practically OWNS this town. HE picked me for this job, not the Board of Selectmen. But there's advantages. He got our daughter out of Dutch with the principal. And he invited all of us to dinner at the manor, Wednesday night! I wonder if he, or his relative Barnabas Collins, will do something about that Willie Loomis!"
"Willie!" Harvey exclaimed. "What's wrong with HIM? I told you I went fishing with him this morning. If not for him, we'd be having hamburgers right now. Mary Beth, just WHAT was the real reason for you calling me this morning?"
"He was arrested for voyeurism--- peeping--- just after you left him. I'm sorry I didn't tell you then, but I didn't want to get your heart out of whack, sweetheart, until I could explain everything in person."
"It would only be the THIRD time today!" Harvey replied irritably. "Listen Mary Beth, he told me about being an ex-con, and he claimed he hasn't been in trouble for 30 years!"
"Well, he was already in trouble just before you met. He was peeping at a young teacher named Victoria Shaw---"
"Miss Shaw?" Alice exclaimed. "She's my English teacher!"
Christine interjected, "Well, maybe what we call 'peeping' is accepted in some circles around here, because this teacher of yours called HER Mom, who bailed Mr. Loomis out of jail before YOUR poor Mom had a chance to charge him! When we get to that Collinwood place, Alice, you'd better look twice, because this Mr. Loomis works there, and he could pass as your Dad, with a few minor changes."
"I was hoping to bring him over and give Mary Beth a little surprise,"
Harvey admitted. "I must be slipping--- I really bought it when he told me
how he helped raise that girl, and his Boss's son.
He said he knew he'd never
get married or have any of his own, but that was almost enough. I REALLY liked him,
jailbird or former hippie or whatever. I guess you won't let me go fishing with
him again, Mary Beth. It's almost too bad, because I'd really like to hear what
he has to say about this. I FELT for the guy. . . It was like looking in a mirror
and seeing how I might have turned out. . . The road not taken, and all that."
"I can't picture YOU peeping, except at ME," Mary Beth joked lamely. "I don't know what to tell you. He seems to like YOU as well. . . If this is as far as he goes, and he says hello to you on the street, maybe you could be a good influence on him. . . I just don't want him around HERE, with OUR daughter, and I don't want my office tainted with this association."
"I'll think about it, honey, but there's a connection. . . It CAN'T just
be a coincidence." At that moment, the oven's timer went off, and Harvey disappeared
into the kitchen. He called, "Alice, I hope you like Tofu casserole---"
*
* * * * * * * * * * *
"So, Willie, how did the day go after you convinced me to go home?" Barnabas Collins asked, as he came up from the basement of the Old House. "Oh, and I almost forgot--- I apologize for bumping into you and knocking you over this morning. I'm no longer as agile in the dark. It seems my condition has changed with age--- just as I have difficulty going up and down all these stairs." Indeed, he moved slowly now toward his favorite chair, and gripped his faithful cane with hands a little swollen with arthritis. He was still a handsome man, though, for all that he had gained weight, and his still-abundant hair was a smooth "distinguished silver".
"Barnabas," Willie replied, "I have to warn you. AGAIN. You didn't fl--RUN into ME. There's somebody in town who looks a LOT like me. The new Sheriff's HUSBAND! He was out fishing, first day of the season, remember? I had all my stuff with me, because I was gonna do it anyway, before you--you got 'sick'. I had to help him up, then HE started having heart trouble, so I kind of stayed with him, and we caught a few trout together. I thought I had him eating from my hand, so to speak, but it was no use. Somebody had seen me outside the Shaw house AFTER you took off, and when I got back into town, I ended up getting busted for what YOU almost did! But thank God, Vicki didn't see it the Sheriff's way. She called her Mom, and Maggie bailed me out."
"My God, we'll have to keep an eye on this new Sheriff AND her spouse!" Barnabas said, anxiously. "This Mary Beth Lacey's from New York City--- I'm SURE she's not one to be put off as easily as the late Sheriff Patterson and his successor, Beardsley."
"You got THAT right. Plus, she had a friend visiting--- a former lady cop that was her partner for years. She's sharp as a tack, too, though at least SHE didn't go bonkers over the resemblance. I'll bet having those two harpies elbowing him aside, made Job Woodard mad as Hell, though," Willie grinned. "I kinda feel sorry for the guy--- even though he's Doc Woodard's son, he's nowhere near as smart, and I KNOW he had his eye on the Sheriff's desk."
"Yes, having Job in the catbird seat WOULD have simplified our lives," the older man sighed. "If only I knew WHY my 'syndrome' has returned after all these years!" he said sadly. "At this point, I still TRULY regret the harm I am tempted to do. My God, if only Julia were still alive!" He gazed at his beloved late wife's portrait, painted just a year before her death, depicting her with their then-12-year-old son. "Jeremy is becoming as fine a doctor as his mother, but we've never told him about my former life. How can he help me, will he even WANT to help me? And then, there is the possibility--- I shudder to think--- this may affect HIS health as well."
"Damn, and just when he's about to propose to Vicki Shaw," Willie sighed.
"You KNOW I would have preferred my son to marry Carolyn and Tony's daughter Pauline," Barnabas admonished. "A marriage to Maggie's daughter might bring old but troubling matters to the surface--- well, they ARE re-surfacing at that. I guess whoever my son chooses is a moot point right now--- he will HAVE to be told, and soon, though I don't know how."
Willie picked up the evening paper, and handed it to Barnabas, now comfortably esconced in his chair. The new cordless phone rang, and Willie brought it to his employer. It was David Collins, inviting Barnabas, Jeremy, and Willie to dinner on Wednesday, to meet the new Sheriff and her family. Barnabas gazed up at Willie, and asked David to wait a minute. Even though he pressed the HOLD button, Barnabas still felt compelled to cover the mouthpiece, as he whispered "I take it he hasn't heard yet of your--- OUR little escapade?"
"I'd guess not, " the houseman whispered back. "I was free before the Sheriff even took fingerprints or mug shots. She probably wrote it off. Still, I don't think I want to see her again for a while, let alone eat with her family. I kinda feel bad about Harvey, though, the husband. He was nice once he got over being scared of me."
Barnabas resumed the call. "Yes, David, I just checked in on Willie, and it seems he caught a chill while out fishing this morning. You know how easily he picks up colds--- it may be full-blown by Wednesday. Even if Jeremy gives him medicine, it would be best to avoid spreading it around. As for my son, he has to be at the Hospital, that night. But you can count on me. This Lacey family sounds fascinating. And another female police officer--- that will be memorable, indeed." He hung up, and perused the paper. Like many another in his age bracket, he glanced at the front page, then hurried on to the obituary section. There was a long item with a headline--- some famous person, no doubt. . . It was then, Barnabas started in his chair, and called, "Willie! Look at this obituary!"
Willie scrambled from the kitchen, slapped on his reading glasses, and bent to see what the urgency was about. "Mysterious Multi-Millionaire Dies in Germany", he read aloud. "It has been announced that Timothy A. Samwell, believed to be about 60 years old, an eccentric, reclusive tycoon in the tradition of the late Howard Hughes, died two weeks ago as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile crash on the Autobahn. The delay was occasioned by strict secrecy surrounding his autopsy.
"Even now, the pathologists involved will say little except that Mr. Samwell was unimpaired by alchohol or any drugs, prescribed or otherwise, and that he had been robust and healthy in spite of his age. Rumours have abounded, though, especially on the Internet, that Mr. Samwell's body was covered with strange scars only partially alleviated with plastic surgery, and that DNA tests were ordered when it appeared that hair on different parts of his body did not seem to match. The tests are said to have been inconclusive.
"DNA or not, Mr. Samwell does not appear, at this time, to have had any living relatives, though it is believed, due to correspondence found in his exclusive penthouse apartment in Cologne, that he may have come from Maine, an apparent orphan, but sponsored by a well-known professor, now deceased. Mr. Samwell first became known to Wall Street because of sound investments in common stocks bought for small amounts of money, which he later parlayed into controlling shares in various companies. E-trading led to his latest venture, buying a considerable chunk of the German branch of Collins Enterprises, which has its home offices in Maine. Mr. Samwell lived much like a gypsy during his peak years, moving to wherever his current interests were, staying behind closed doors, and leaving when he started anew elsewhere.
"Due to his lack of family, the big question of WHO will inherit his estate will become of vital interest in weeks to come, but in the meantime, funeral arrangements for Mr. Samwell are also in limbo, though, given his Maine connections, it is possible his remains will be flown back to the USA."
"ADAM! Of Course!" Barnabas shouted. "Timothy--- for Timothy Elliot Stokes. A., for Adam, and Samwell--- probably for Sam Evans. I can certainly understand why he wouldn't name himself after ME."
"Or ME, either," Willie said, with regret. He still remembered the last fight he had with Adam, before Barnabas drove the latter away. Cain and Abel, he thought, that was us. And I was Cain, though Adam was the one who had to leave.
"Well, that explains why I am feeling 'that way' again," Barnabas concluded. "Adams's existence must still have been connected to my old curse, even though I had been cursed by others in the meantime, and Angelique finally removed it. . . I've felt like this for two weeks. I even recall the first night--- terrible pain in every joint, every muscle--- that must have been the instant of the crash," he shuddered. "Poor Adam, alas. . . He made a mark on the world, but it seems he died alone. No family, not even mention of a companion of any sort. In that regard, I have been most unworthily blessed." He glanced at the portrait again, and then, at Willie. "Now, it is more urgent than ever to find a cure. . . I don't wish to re-live 30 years ago, any more than YOU do, my friend." Barnabas reached up, and put his hand on Willie's arm.
Willie patted it reassuringly. "How are you holding up tonight? I have fresh meat, just got it at the Eagle. . . Would the blood in that help?"
"Perhaps for a while. . . I hope it does, until my son can help me."
Later that night, after Barnabas appeared to doze off in his chair, Willie sat to watch him until Jeremy came home from the hospital. But he'd had such a long, tiring day, he soon slept, himself. Willie dreamed he was in the hall of colors again, and the voice, which he suddenly realized was like his own and that Harvey's, repeated the phrase, "I have you together now!" But when he woke up, he remembered so little of the dream, he couldn't discuss it with Barnabas, who had enough problems of his own, anyway . . . BARNABAS! He wasn't in HIS chair!
Willie turned to look for the older man, and caught him putting on his cape to go out. "NO, Barnabas, you CAN'T go out, no matter how awful you feel!"
"I MUST. The hunger is getting worse!" was the despairing reply. Barnabas pushed Willie roughly aside.
At that instant, Jeremy came in from his shift at the hospital. Then, Barnabas, suddenly remorseful, asked his son for some kind of sedative. Jeremy glanced into Willie's eyes, saw tears forming, and, without a word, opened his personal medical bag, extracted a vial, and shook out two pills, which Barnabas gulped down on the spot. He was still human enough to feel the effects, and within minutes, the other two men had to half-carry him to a small room off the kitchen, which had been, when the house was first built, a sickroom for family members.
Willie made coffee, and forced himself to sit next to the cot. Jeremy, who had disappeared for a few minutes, came back, sat next to him, and handed him something cold and metallic. "Lay this over Father's heart, and he will sleep through the night," the young doctor said.
Willie had to stop himself from shouting. "A silver Crucifix---!" Then he glanced into the hazel-brown eyes of the red-haired younger man, who so resembled his mother. "You--- You KNOW!" Willie whispered.
"Yes, ever since I was 21, and Tony Peterson was able to release to me, sealed information my mother had entrusted to him before her death. As you remember, I left home and school for six months--- it was BECAUSE of that. It took that long for me to get over the anger and terror. Though it seemed impossible to believe, I think I had always known it. And now, as Mother always feared, it's coming back. We have our work cut out for us--- and we HAVE to try to keep him out of trouble."
"Take it from ME, there WILL be trouble, and sooner than you think. You KNOW what he needs---"
"I can't promise to get him human blood. Aside from the fact that there's too much surveillance in the hospital these days, I firmly believe THAT would turn the tide of his humanity. But animal blood is still acceptable in its place, though where to get enough of THAT will be a challenge."
"Hopeless, hopeless, and a tough new Sheriff in town, to boot," Willie
sighed wearily.
* * * * * * * * * * *
PART TWO-(A)---TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2000
The next day, Christine didn't want to disrupt Mary Beth's workday, or irritate Job Woodard, whom she now suspected was, more than likely, secretly envious of her friend's position. TWO females usurping, even temporarily, what he likely thought was HIS rightful place was too much for one man to bear. So, Christine amused herself by driving up and down the coast, stopping in Rockport for a new pair of loafers, in Ellsworth for a highly advertised lunch buffet overlooking a beautiful lake, and ending up back in Collinsport as the day waned. Maybe I'll look for L.L.Bean's H.Q. tomorrow, she thought, as she alighted from her car at a public ocean beach. She noticed there was a walkway along the coastline, which ran under a rather high cliff about a mile away, from which summit she could make out a couple of fanciful towers. Must be that Collinwood place, she thought, and began to stroll in that direction.
She soon realized that walking directly under a cliff was no way to see what was above it, but she enjoyed the walk anyway. It was still beautiful outside, the sunny day having given way to a spectacular sunset, and the sky turning a deep azure hue. Christine loved the crashing of the surf on the many boulders at high tide, much wilder than at the easternmost tip of Long Island. You can sail your troubles on those waves, she thought, and they would be pounded and tumbled until they were as smooth and clean as ocean pebbles and driftwood. I could put all those broken relationships there, and the marriage that didn't work out, and the kids I never had, and the drinking, and the setbacks and aggravations from work, and something white and shiny would come back, to put it in my pocket and display on a mantel at home. Or to just drop in a drawer, never again to see the light of day. . .
She stooped from the walkway to pick up a purplish clam shell, when she heard a rustle in the beach-berry bushes nearby. Years of experience had made her instinctively reach under her jacket for her gun--- she thanked God she had a license to carry one over state lines. She whirled around, and noticed a half-hidden cave nearby. "Come out with your hands up!" she barked, as if this was an alley behind some New York slums, 20 years ago.
"Please, gentle Madam, I meant no harm," a rich, warm voice intoned, as its source, a dignified-looking elderly man wearing a flounced wool cape, came from behind the bushes, with his hands obediently raised over his head. A silver-headed cane lay on the ground at his feet, and Christine hadn't even TOLD him to drop it.
Christine, now feeling rather embarrassed, told the man to relax, and replaced her gun in the ever-present shoulder holster. "I'm TERRIBLY sorry," she began, "but I was alone in this unfamiliar place, 'roamin' in the gloamin', and while it's been years since I patrolled a beat, I AM still in law enforcement---" She felt herself getting as tongue-tied as a teenager, under the gentleman's steady, and, it was becoming obvious, ADMIRING gaze.
"No, I am the one who should apologize," the man insisted. "I
should have greeted you openly as you came up the path, but there's a bench behind
the bushes, and I was SO comfortable and lazy,
I thought I would just watch you
pass by. Then, my cane slid from my grip--- rheumatism is the culprit. It was my
scrambling to retrieve it that startled you, no doubt."
"Still, I over-reacted, but that's what years in the police business, in New York City, will do to one," Christine said.
"Ah, so YOU are the new Sheriff, then?" The man began to study her more intensely. "My name is Barnabas Collins. My houseman, Willie Loomis, told me about his unfortunate encounter with you this morning---"
"No, no, that's my former partner and, as it happens, my best friend, Mary Beth Lacey. My name is Christine Cagney."
"Oh, yes, the 'sharp partner from New York', as Willie put it. You BOTH outdid Job Woodard, who's known Willie most of his life."
"Yes, well, at the time, we--- I mean, Mary Beth--- I just happened to be there--- really had no other options. She isn't familiar with whatever the customs are up here, and frankly, I'm puzzled as well, though it really isn't my business. Still, I have excellent reason to believe she will be an asset to your community. And all's well that ends well, since Mrs. Shaw rescued Willie anyway."
"Yes, Maggie and Willie have a special bond," Barnabas said in a faraway voice. "Years ago, they were both put in a terrible situation for which neither was responsible, and she forgave him his trespasses, which were mainly intended to help her."
"You sound as if you know a lot about that incident, Mr. Collins," Christine asked, suspicion creeping into her voice.
"Only what they both have been able to tell me, I assure you," Barnabas replied without hesitation. "They both had periods of memory loss, caused by one who must have been a mastermind of brainwashing. Victims of kidnappings often come to sympathize with at least one of their captors, or so my late wife used to say. She was a psychiatrist."
"Stockholm Syndrome, it's called," Christine, calming once more, said. "The more time victims and their kidnappers spend together, the more the barriers tend to break down between them, but this Maggie and Willie have taken it to an extreme. Are you sure her daughter will be all right?"
"I have NO doubt, as far as Willie is concerned, anyway. He has always been an avuncular, if not fatherly, figure to young Vicki, and to my own son, as well. Whatever he does, you can depend upon it being in their best interests." Barnabas turned to the bushes. "I grow tired when I stand too long," he said. "Would you mind sitting with me a while, and enjoying the passing of this evening, Miss Cagney? Or must you leave now--- I would imagine the Laceys are waiting dinner for you. How inconsiderate of me to forget that."
"No, not really. I had a big lunch in Ellsworth, so I'm not all that hungry. I can call on my cell phone, anyway. They're all quite used to my impulsiveness. I came up here a week early on impulse!" Christine laughed.
"And glad I am of it, Willie's travails to the contrary," Barnabas said, smiling. He took her hand, and raised it to his lips.
Though they were rather cold lips, Christine always enjoyed this old-fashioned gesture. The chilly sensation made her feel a little weird, but it was the nicest species of weird. In the past, such extravagant, continental tributes had usually been delivered by gentlemen old enough to be her father, men who also, for whatever reason, turned out to be unavailable, though not necessarily due to marriage. Now, she suddenly realized, though THIS man was about the same age as her father when the latter had passed away, there was no longer a great gap between her age and Barnabas's, and, furthermore, he WAS available.
Barnabas still held her hand as he led her to the bench, at the mouth of the cave. "Interesting location for a public walkway," she commented as they sat down.
"This portion was contributed by my family. Collinwood, and my own home, an older mansion which was the original family homestead, are almost directly above us. This ledge above us is the highest point of the cliff, known as Widow's Hill."
"I noticed the towers. Well, as of tomorrow night, I'll be seeing them up close and then some, since we're all coming to dinner with David and Hallie Collins."
"And, so am I," Barnabas said eagerly. "This meeting must be kismet, indeed. Serendipitous. I am delighted to become acquainted with you in advance of the more formal occasion." He leaned toward Christine.
She subtly pulled away, not quite sure where she wanted this business to go. Something nagged at her mind, but she dismissed her worst suspicions as holdovers from her own troubled past. This old man, at least 15 years her senior, wasn't likely to overpower her in any case. Instead, she prattled on about the area. "There's a cave back there. . . Is there a passage from above running through it? Is that how you got down here?"
Her companion laughed. "Would that I was still fit and sturdy enough, but alas, no, I took a rather long flight of stairs down from the estate. There ARE legends about the cave, true enough, that a tunnel runs from above, and was an escape route from Indian attacks and then, a stop on the Underground Railroad. But any such earthworks have been blocked, or caved in, or, more likely, simply never existed to begin with. If you entered it, you would see, it's very shallow, and probably occupied by a few bats."
"And Widow's Hill. Does that mean what I think it means?" Christine asked. "DID widows go up there to end it all? How terrible that they couldn't go on with their lives without their husbands."
"Not ALL the widows hereabout killed themselves!" Barnabas admonished. "Most wives who stood up there saw their husbands' ships come safely into the harbor. An unfortunate few who were overwhelmed by their losses DID leap, alas. One poor lady lost not only her husband, but all six of her sons over the years. But most of the widows either remarried, or did without, as most others in their situation. There WERE other suicides and accidents, but there's a sturdy guardrail up there now, and you'll soon see it's no less safe than any other scenic overlook."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Collins---"
"Barnabas. And may I call you Christine?"
Disarming gesture Number Two, Christine thought. "Well, sure, Barnabas. That's a Biblical name, like so many around here. Though I also drove by a Saint Barnabas Catholic Church on my way up to Maine."
"As an early evangelist, he is also a Saint in the Anglican High Church tradition, and some other denominations, back in England, whence I hail," the modern Barnabas replied easily.
"Yes, you came here like your pioneer ancestors," Christine mused. "I was just going to say, I was a little upset by the Widow's Hill business. Lifelong feminist habit, I guess. I admit I don't know from that kind of devotion, anyway. Mary Beth and her husband Harvey, now, I think I'd keep either of them away from this place if one loses the other. . ."
"So YOU'VE never been married? I find that hard to believe."
"Well, yes, for several years. It ended badly, SO badly I dropped his name as soon as I could. But I don't have anything against people who are, or were, happily married, or I couldn't spend time with the Laceys! You and the late Mrs. Collins were, I presume, happy?--- Oh, sorry AGAIN, it's none of my business!" Christine could feel herself blush darkly.
Barnabas sounded miles away again, as he replied, "Perhaps it IS your business,
dear Christine.
Or will soon be. Yes, I WAS happily married to my late Julia,
but all too briefly--- barely 14 years. It was a hard-won happiness--- I had known
her for some years before that, and she fell in love with me LONG before I came to
feel the same way about her, which makes my regret all the harder to bear now. She
was, as I just told you, a professional woman, like yourself, something I was unused
to at the time, and we were often in conflict. I was ALSO married previously, which
had been a difficult relationship, probably akin to your own situation, and I came
to Julia equipped with what they now call 'baggage'. She forgave and forgave and
forgave. I daresay that is 99 per cent of marriage for a woman, alas, forgiving.
But we had been through much together, and it worked out well, until she had her
final illness." He hung his head, but still held Christine's hand.
This made her believe he couldn't be THAT inconsolable a widower. "I'm truly sorry for your loss. That kind of love will always surpass my understanding. Years of disillusionment have made me a thorough-going cynic, I guess." She withdrew her hand, and stared bleakly out to sea. The moon had appeared in the ever-darkening violet-blue sky, and its reflection rippled over the waves.
"I don't believe for a moment that you are solidly cynical," Barnabas protested. "You say you have often been disillusioned. . . You cannot be dis-illusioned without having first HAD an illusion, a dream, rather--- I know this from my own experiences. True cynics have NO illusions, no dreams. Yet it appears that you fear you are having one right now!"
"Now, THAT'S a take on the subject I never considered before," Christine said with wonder.
"I assure you, my dear, what is starting right now is NO illusion." Barnabas pulled at her hand again, and kissed it once more. Cold lips. . . Must have to do with his age, and whatever illness Willie said he had, Christine thought, hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't contagious, especially when he dropped her hand, and kissed her on her own lips, instead! In spite of the coldness, she reached for him and they continued in this embrace for a few minutes.
She whispered, "Now THIS is impulsive."
"I don't believe so," he said softly. "You are unlike Julia in appearance, but in this short time I have discerned many of her qualities in you. And at this stage in our lives, it's best not to wait too long to act upon positive feelings, don't you think?"
"Maybe not. . . I want to stay here, or go wherever you want. . . but I have to call. . . Mary---" Barnabas cut Christine off with another kiss. Then, his lips, no longer noticeably cold, worked their way to her throat. She felt the touch of his teeth. "Hey, no hickeys," she murmurred. "The Laceys will be on you like they're MY parents. . ."
Another noise from the bushes, loud and intended to be intrusive. Barnabas and Christine sprung from each other, and the latter was reaching for her gun, when the interloper came into view. It was Willie Loomis, who aimed a flashlight right in their eyes.
"Barnabas!" he began, anxiously. "Thank God I found you. Jeremy--- Doctor Jeremy--- he said it's time for your medication." Then, forcing himself to be calm, Willie addressed Christine. "Hullo, Miss Cagney. Long time, no see, huh?"
"Yes, it seems we just keep running into each other, Willie. Been behaving?"
"Yes, Ma'am. My regards to Mr. and Sheriff Lacey. I won't be around tomorrow evening at the dinner. I'm feeling kind of run-down, but after Barnabas here gets HIS medicine, Doc Jeremy will be giving ME that 'achy-head-and-stuffy-nose-so-I-can-sleep-medicine'. Like on TV, only stronger, so I won't be out looking in girls' windows."
"WILLIE---" Barnabas's tone suddenly became menacing, and his servant backed off. "I apologize for Willie, Christine. He DOES mean well, but he is obviously still resentful. And he IS genuinely concerned about my health. I must go take my medicine, and I suppose this will be the last we see of each other until tomorrow evening. Allow me to walk you back to your vehicle, it is quite dark already. Thank Heaven Willie brought a torch. That's what we call them in England, you know." He gave her his arm, and Willie meekly handed over the flashlight. He followed the couple at a discreet distance, praying that what he had just interrupted wouldn't resume, at least in his presence.
After their modest, hand-shaking farewell, Willie silently led Barnabas back to the entrance of the cave, opening a small, dark-painted door behind a boulder along the innermost wall, and through the labyrinth of alleys and stairs within, to the cellar of the Old House. "God, Barnabas, that was close," Willie breathed as soon as they were safely in a chamber with a casket and lit by candelabrum. "I don't even want to THINK what would have happened if you'd bitten the Sheriff's best friend! What the Hell were you THINKING about?"
"Until your opportune arrival, Willie, slaking my thirst. Perhaps I should relieve it with YOU?"
"NO!" Jeremy Collins stood in the doorway, Crucifix held high. "Father, don't. You are not FULLY a vampire yet, and we want to keep you that way. Until you taste human blood, there's a chance we can reverse this!"
"Oh, GOD! My son DOES know! Did YOU tell him, Willie?" Barnabas grabbed the hapless servant as in days of old. Willie was an old man now, it wouldn't take much to shake him to death, let alone beat him---
Jeremy snapped, "NO, Father, Mother wanted me to know, so she left me documentation, lab notes, even Dr. Lang's 'Adam' journals. I was a crazy young kid and didn't WANT to believe it, until I went to Arizona and spent time with a Native American tribe. Without my having to tell them much, they helped me understand what is and isn't your fault, and how not to hate you, even if the curse emerged again."
"And HOW, pray tell, did they achieve THAT miracle?" Barnabas sneered.
"They trained me to undergo a 'vision quest.' That's a custom in some tribes--- they give you special herbs, and you go into a trance, seek a spirit animal guide. . . Mine was NOT a bat, as you might think, but a white egret, like the ones you took me to watch in the marsh when I was a boy. Remember, Father?"
"Yes, yes I do, my son. I am sorry. . . Do tell me more. And don't think I am shocked by this--- if you only knew some of the means I, and your mother, used to discover arcane secrets. . ."
"Well, the egret let me get on his back, and we flew to a volcano! I didn't get it at first, but then I saw a shining city beneath it, and I realized, this must be Mt. Pelee on Martinique, before it blew up in 1902 and destroyed the city, Ste. Pierre. . . There was a blonde woman standing on the summit, looking into its mouth at the churning lava within. . . She was beautiful, with crystal-blue eyes, and had a laugh like a waterfall. . ."
"Angelique! She came from Martinique, and put the curse on me, then took it away in the last days of her life. . . Yet now it's back!"
"Yes, well. . . She showed me scenes from your life with her, and how she tried to become good in the end. She must have known something like this would happen, because she tried to tell me something that would help you in the future. She said, 'If Barnabas should again be afflicted, it all depends on one who least deserved to die at his hands. This one must bring those together that had been separated. Or the curse will carry on for another generation.' Then I was flown back, and the next thing I knew, I was looking up at the shaman who had helped me. I felt like I had been born again. I even cried! But the shaman warned me not to divulge what I had learned until the appointed time, if ever. I had hoped it would never come, but I guess THIS is it."
Barnabas began to weep--- tears tinged with purplish blood stained his cheeks. "Oh, my son, it is worse than I imagined. So many have died 'at my hands', so to speak, over the centuries. . . Pinning down a specific victim would take a long time, and figuring out those parties who must come together. . . And by then, there will be MORE victims."
There was something about the "bringing together" part that nipped at
Willie's memory. Where had he heard that expression lately? He couldn't put a finger
on it. Be he DID have a suggestion.
"What if we made a list of all the victims
you can remember, and ran them on Jeremy's computer? Maybe we could compare them
and figure out who had anybody to bring together? You know, descendants, friends,
whatever?"
"After 33 years, Willie still has a flash or two of inspiration," Barnabas admitted. "Such a solution would never have occurred to me. Could this be done without anyone finding out, Son?"
"I don't see why not. I can keep the names, dates, and circumstances in
a separate file, encrypted, with a password known only to myself, and only use the
Internet to track down geneaology databases. We can get the Collins family history,
and some stuff from the library. . .
It will be difficult, but not impossible.
In the meantime, you MUST accept injections of the medications Mother formulated
to keep the vampire syndrome in check. I just made some. And eat as much animal
blood as possible. I know you will not permit me to confine you, Father, but stay
close to home."
"And tell him to stay away from the Sheriff's friend Christine!" Willie shouted. "I caught them smooching up, and Barnabas was going in for the big bite. I don't want anything to happen to Barnabas and I don't want anything to happen to HER. She was the only one who treated me fair and square when I was in jail yesterday. In fact, stay away from the whole Lacey crowd. Stay home from the dinner, Barnabas," he pleaded.
"I don't know if I can, Willie. I certainly won't be alone with the lady then, and we have to maintain some appearance of normalcy if we are to keep the new Sheriff off our scent. The medication will do for the time being, I am sure. I hope, permanently. Because in spite of my sharp words to you a while ago, Willie, I really DO like that Cagney woman, and until she blushed, which made the blood seem so tempting, I thought, perhaps. . . Julia has been gone almost 15 years. . . Jeremy, you DO understand, don't you? I loved your mother dearly, but I HAVE been lonely. . . And I haven't met anyone else since, who made as strong an impression in such a short time."
"Yes, Father, I understand," Jeremy whispered sadly. He thought about
Vicki Shaw, and the possible threat to HER. This crisis HAD to have a solution.
It just HAD to. . .
* * * * * * * * * * *
PART TWO-(B)---WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2000
The afternoon before the dinner at Collinwood, Harvey had to go out gift-shopping. Mary Beth and Christine had discussed what kind of hostess gift was suitable, and he had agreed to shuttle the latter around as she combed several "Shoppes" with a list of possibilities. Finally, Christine hit paydirt, when she found a set of antique candy dishes decorated with chromo-tint pictures of an old-fashioned police station much like Collinsport's. "Check out the horse-drawn paddy- wagon," she laughed as she showed them to Harvey. "And the best part is, they weren't too expensive, so we can give one to Hallie Collins, keep one for YOUR house, and I can have the last one."
Harvey shook his head. "You don't think that will be too kitschy for those people, do you? I mean, they must have a whole mansion full of fancy dust-collectors by now."
"No woman EVER has enough of what you call 'dust-collectors', Harvey," Christine replied. "Dusting them keeps us off the streets."
"Dusting ours keeps ME from fishing," he complained, "and makes me sneeze!"
"Well, this can be propped up on one of those little easels, so maybe it won't get TOO dusty. Hey, that reminds me. . . The shop where I bought these didn't have any of those easels. Maybe you can look around, after you go to the package store for the wine, which the Collinses probably ALSO have too much of. You know I'm banned from doing THAT errand."
"Yeah, I understand." Harvey patted Christine's shoulder. "Why don't you poke around in another store, just for fun this time? There's no hurry." He shuffled off to the trendy new package store down the street. In almost no time, with the aid of the resident "Wine Consultant", he had the "appropriate" vintage discreetly tucked beneath his arm. Then, he noticed, the Evans Gallery was just kitty-corner to the package store. Harvey trotted across the intersection, as much from practical need as from curiosity. After all, he reasoned, it IS an art place; they must have easels, maybe even the tiny kind Christine was seeking.
The gallery was almost deserted, it being the middle of the week, and off-tourist-season. The doorbell reververated in the stillness. A female voice, pleasantly modulated, called, "I'll be there in a minute!" from behind some racked frames behind the counter. Harvey called back, "I'm just looking!" and started to examine the many paintings and sc