Well, soon enough.
They entered the dining room, arm in arm, and a drink-a reward- was poured for her.
Isabelle was already seated at the table, head lowered, but not in prayer. She had no religious faith. However, she did believe in walking evil.
"Hello, Daddy."
Long ago, she had called him that to please her mother. These days, the sarcastic tone of this salutation could only be read as Drop dead.
Throughout the evening meal, Isabelle watched her mother toy with food and drink her dinner. The older woman was in a stupor by the time dessert was served. Her husband and daughter talked around her body while she remained upright. When Sarah laid her head on the table and closed her eyes, they conversed over her bowed back. Their argument was an old one.
"I take care of your mother," said Addison.
"You're more like her jailor," said Isabelle. "You killed off every plan she ever had for getting back out in the world."
"Your mother didn't need another college degree. She's beautiful, and beauty is power. I gave her whatever she asked for… just for the pleasure of looking at her." He stared at his wife's sleeping face, her open mouth, the bit of spittle on her lips.
Sarah was awakened for the postprandial brandy, another lure. Steadied by Addison 's arm, she was led to a couch in the cavernous front room, where a window spanned thirty feet to a pitched roof and offered a view of darkening woods.
When an hour had passed, and his wife was at the point of passing out, Addison gently lowered her head to the pillow of his lap. "Tomorrow the weaning begins," he whispered in her ear. "Only a little booze for breakfast and lunch, none for dinner."
When her eyes had closed in sleep, he smoothed the hair back from her brow. He looked up to see Isabelle glaring at him, hating him, and so, of course, he smiled. "One year, I cut her off on the day of the ball. Huge mistake. That was the first visit from the spiders. Three days is about right."
Isabelle's hands curled into fists, a good sign that she was paying attention.
"By the time your mother's birthday rolls around, she'll be able to go all night without a drink. Do you think Oren Hobbs will come to the ball this year?"
"Why should he? He hasn't been here since he was twelve."
Addison doubted that she would be disappointed if Oren never came to another birthday ball. Though Isabelle liked to nurse her grudges, even she could not carry this old obsession for so many years. However, it was worth a dig. "There's a rumor that Oren always had a thing for older women, married women." He looked down at his sleeping wife.
"And you think he slept with Mom?" Isabelle was incredulous.
Or was she jealous?
"Well, I know he didn't sleep with you." He saw heat rising in her face to color it with a flush. "I know what you did, Belle-all those years ago. It's going to come back and bite you."
Isabelle rose from the couch and stood over her sleeping mother. "I don't know why Mom stayed with you. But I know why she drinks. The alcohol dulls your sharp little teeth when you nip at her ankles."
What a roundabout way of calling him a son of a bitch. Isabelle was normally so direct. He looked down at his wife, the woman who shared his house if not his bed. In a stage whisper, he said, "Oh, look. She wakes."
Sarah Winston lifted her head in the manner of a timid animal peering out of a burrow and finding the world unsafe. Her head dropped. Her eyes closed.
Isabelle sank to her knees and stroked her mother's hair. "This is torture. Why do you let her go on like this?"
"Oh, I don't know." He leaned forward with a smile, something between a tease and a leer. "Because I love her madly?"
Rising to her feet, Isabelle crossed the room with long strides and no wave or word of good night.
Addison caressed his wife's sleeping face. He loved her madly.
Deputies Dave Hardy and John Faulks had done a poor job of removing bloodstains from their uniforms. The pink blotches were not the only evidence of a fight. They had been caught on film. Waiting for the fallout from their skirmish on the streets of Saulburg, they stood before the window of an appliance store and watched the images of ten television sets tuned to different channels.
"We're screwed," said Dave Hardy. "If that fight makes it to the evening news, we'll get suspended."
John Faulks was equally worried, and this carried in his voice, but he was also a man in denial. "That guy was just a cameraman, not a reporter." He turned his eyes from screen to screen. "I wish I could remember the name of the news show. I know the station call letters were printed on that camera."
Dave pointed to a TV set at the top of the display. "What the hell is that?"
The screen showed them the still image of a window set in a brick wall. A banner of type ran across the bottom of the screen, telling them what they already knew: the bones of a lost boy had been found in Coventry. And now something different: the hunt for a fugitive was under way.
"I wish we had sound," said Deputy Faulks.
The camera pulled back to show more of the building.
"It's the library in Coventry," said Dave. "Those stupid reporters believed you. They went to the library."
"I'm sorry," said the man beside him. "It was just a joke. How was I supposed to know they'd actually go there. Nobody in Coventry ever goes to the libra-"
"Don't ever say that again." Dave Hardy's fist was raised and promising more than a nosebleed this time.
Evelyn's cabin had once been her shelter from a hateful old man. Millard Straub had punished his wife every day of their marriage-because he was dying and she was not.
Tonight, Oren studied the ruins. Nature was reclaiming the structure, sending tree shoots through broken windowpanes. There were cracks in the foundation, and the porch roof sagged under the weight of a fallen branch. He could smell wood rot from the yard.
There was one improvement. The turnout for the driveway had been expanded into a parking lot. The van belonged to the Straub Hotel, and the sedans would be owned by local people. He judged some of the cars to be twenty years old and older, with cracked dashboards, dents and bald tires. Others were brand-new luxury models. The theme of wealth parked next to poverty played out all over Coventry, where a millionaire might build his mansion next to an acre parcel with a mobile home-or an old knock-down cabin like this one.
The land sloped downward as he moved toward the rear of the property, and the cabin's foundation had been built to accommodate this incline. He remembered concrete footings six feet high at the back end and a large opening used for storing yard tools. Even better, there was a trapdoor that would give him a view of the goings-on in the rooms above. As he rounded the cabin, he discovered that the opening had been enclosed. Behind the wooden steps leading up to the kitchen, he found a metal door set into the new wall of cement, and it was padlocked.
A pity. The old crawl space would have made a perfect spy hole. Now he would have to risk being seen. Oren walked up the back stairs and looked through a cracked windowpane. There was no one in the kitchen. He opened the door and entered the room, stepping light and slow. A rough interior wall was pocked with light leaking through the crumbled mortar between the logs. It offered him a selection of peepholes large and small. He moved silently from one to the other until he found a good view of the gathering in the next room.
No money had been wasted on props for the séance. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling in ghosty gray curtains, very theatrical, but all too real. Six people sat on metal folding chairs gathered around a flimsy card table. They were encircled by the light of candles on cracked plates that sat on the floor. Other people were seated in shadow on the far side of the room. Evelyn Straub occupied a love seat, and no one dared keep her company.