The Walker in Shadows (23 page)

"I'll do anything that doesn't involve taking physical risks. Anyway, it kept him busy for an hour; God knows what he would have proposed if I hadn't gone along with this. All right, my dear, let's go."

Instead of heading for the nearest motel, Josef drove on through town and turned north.

"Where are we going?" Mark asked.

" Frederick. I figured we might as well put a little distance between us and our friend."

Having been concerned with far more vital issues, Pat had not considered the social aspects of their situation. But when the desk clerk addressed her as "Mrs. Fried-richs," a belated realization of what she was doing swept over her. As they walked down the corridor toward their rooms, Josef muttered, "You look like the picture of guilt, my dear. If we hadn't had the kids with us, the clerk would have assumed the worst."

"Why did you have to give your own name?" Pat hissed.

"Because I was using a credit card. Relax, will you? I'm already divorced; no one is going to cite you as corespondent." He put his key in the lock and opened the door. "Here we are," he said aloud. "Cozy, isn't it?"

The room looked like all the motel rooms Pat had ever seen: shabby, characterless and bland. The color scheme was green and yellow. The pictures over the bed were prints of chrysanthemums in green vases.

Josef crossed the room to a door in the side wall and unlocked it.

"You and Kathy can share this room," he said to Pat. Then he turned to Mark. "Your room is at the other end of the wing. I couldn't get three rooms adjoining."

For a moment Mark stared blankly at the key Josef had offered him. His eyes narrowed. Then, with a slight shrug, he took the key, and his mother relaxed. After all, it was the most practical way of arranging matters; Mark and Josef had no desire to share a room. And even Mark could hardly expect the older man to take the room at the end of the hall, away from his daughter.

"You don't mind if I stick around until one o'clock, do you?" Mark asked politely.

"Not at all. Make yourself comfortable."

In addition to the double bed, the room contained the usual furniture: a desk, a chest of drawers, and a table and two chairs. Josef pulled out a chair for Pat. She shook her head.

"Thanks, but I'd better hang up my dress. I don't want to go to work all crumpled and messy."

"You aren't going to work tomorrow!" Mark exclaimed.

"Mark, I have to. I can't go on-"

"Just one more day, Mom. I told them you had flu and probably wouldn't be in till the middle of the week. Just tomorrow, and then-"

"And then-what? a miracle?"

"I've got an idea," Mark said. "If it doesn't work… Please, Mom?"

"Well… all right. But what-"

"I think I'll go look for the Coke machine," Mark said, plunging toward the door.

"Get some ice while you're at it," Josef said.

"Sure, right. Kath?"

Kathy followed him.

Pat closed her mouth on the question she had not had time to ask, and turned to see Josef taking a bottle from his overnight bag.

Why she should have chosen that particular moment to speak she did not know. In fact, the words that came out of her mouth were words she would normally not have said.

"Are you going to sit here drinking until one o'clock?"

With one angry twist of the wrist Josef opened the bottle and splashed a generous amount into his glass.

"You sound like my ex-wife," he said. "It doesn't become you, my dear."

"If that's why she left you-"

"That was one of the reasons. If it's any of your business."

Then his face twisted, as anger was replaced by horrified concern.

"My God, Pat, what are we doing? I'm sorry. It is your business, you have every right-"

He came toward her, his arms outstretched. Pat turned away.

"No, don't. Not now, not… I don't know what made me say those things."

She heard his heavy breathing close behind her, but he did not touch her.

"My ex-wife was a religious fanatic," he said. "A middle-aged Jesus freak. When I married her she was devout, a little straitlaced; I found that charming, can you imagine? I thought marriage would… make her see things differently. But she got worse. She despised all the indulgences of the flesh, including… Kathy was an accident, and was resented as such. Until two years ago my daughter never wore makeup, or cut her hair, or owned a pretty dress. Marion sent her to one of those fundamentalist schools, for girls only. I should have interfered long before I did, but I thought raising a girl was a mother's job. I was a damned fool, and believe me, I paid for it. I can't say Marion drove me to drink. It's always a matter of one's own choice, isn't it? I guess I did it to get back at her. I'm still doing it."

"You don't have to tell me this," Pat whispered.

"Yes, I do. It sounds crazy, I know, but I could have admitted that she was promiscuous, or that she had fallen in love with someone else, or even that she found me boring and repulsive. What I couldn't admit was that she was dim-witted enough to leave me for an oily, unctuous evangelist. That's where she is now, in his commune in California, wandering around in a long white robe serving saintly Father Emmanuel…"

"Don't." Impulsively Pat turned, and found herself in his arms. She clung to him, her hands moving over the soft tweed of his jacket, but when he bent his head she turned her face away.

"The kids will be back any second," she murmured.

"I guess Mark isn't ready for this development," Josef agreed. His hands slid slowly down her back, as if reluctant to release her. "Are you ready for it, Pat?"

"No. Not until… We're in an abnormal situation, Josef. I can't trust my feelings."

"I can trust mine. I love you, Pat, I'll even put up with that outrageous son of yours if you'll have me."

"Not now," Pat said. She moved away from him and saw, from his expression, that her withdrawal had wounded him. But it was herself she didn't trust; his physical presence had aroused feelings she had not experienced for over a year, and she knew they were clouding her judgment.

"What would your husband have thought of our ghost?" Josef asked.

"Jerry?" She considered the question. "He'd have been fascinated-but skeptical. He would have been the first to slap Mark down when his theories got too farfetched."

She was interrupted by Mark banging on the door. Josef went to answer it. Something of the tension that had filled the room must have remained; Mark looked suspiciously at his mother.

"What were you talking about?"

"Your name was mentioned," Josef said. "But only in passing. Strange as it may seem to you, there are other topics worthy of discussion. In God's name what have you got there?" Mark had begun unloading various edibles onto the table.

"They are fascinated by machines," Pat explained. "Jerry always said Mark would feed a quarter into a slot if he knew it would only give him a punch in the nose."

She could see that Josef was self-conscious about her references to her husband, and that was something they would have to work out before they could come to any real understanding. Jerry would always be part of her life. She couldn't forget him and she didn't want to. In the last few days she had been able to remember him and talk about him without the gnawing ache of loss, and that was not only a miracle, it was the way things ought to be. Jerry was the last person in the world to expect her to wallow in widowhood. He would rejoice in her new happiness.

Mark arranged a row of cans and a heap of candy bars on the table and sat down with the books he had brought with him.

"I," he announced regally, "have work to do. The rest of you can amuse yourselves as you like, but please keep it down."

"Go get your mother a chair," Josef said, scowling at him.

"Please," Pat said gently.

"Oh." Mark rose and went into the next room. After an apologetic glance at Pat, Josef followed him. They returned, each carrying a chair.

And that was something else that would have to be worked out, Pat thought. Mark was a grown man. He would not lightly submit to the parental authority of a stranger. He didn't need a father, he needed a friend.

Josef was obviously struggling with the same realization, for after they had settled in their chairs he spoke to Mark in kindlier tones than he had used thus far.

"What are you looking for, Mark? Can we help?"

"Well-sure. I guess you could. I'm curious about where and when Peter Turnbull was killed. 'A cavalry skirmish, somewhere in Maryland ' is pretty vague. I thought maybe one of the military-history books would have a record of the engagements White's Rangers fought in."

"If the unit was part of Lee's Army of northern Virginia, we should be able to locate it," Josef said.

"But cavalry troops didn't always stay with the main body of the army. They went off on their own, like that raid on Poolesville in 1862."

"True." Josef picked up one of the books. "We can but try. I don't understand why you think it's important, but-"

"Maybe it isn't," Mark said. "Only I got to wondering… The opposing armies were so close. Right across the Potomac from each other, much of the time. Of course distances were greater then-no, damn it, I mean-"

"I know what you mean," Josef said, smiling. "It took longer in those days to cover the distance. All the same, the armies were close. This area was hit several times by Confederate troops looking for horses and supplies. Perhaps Peter was with one of those units."

"If he was," Mark said, "wouldn't he drop in on his girl friend while he was in the area?"

Josef considered the idea, scratching his chin, but Pat exclaimed impatiently, "Of course he would. Nineteen years old, swaggering in a fancy uniform-"

"They weren't so fancy," Kathy said. "Remember in
Gone With the Wind
, how they were spinning butternut cloth for uniforms, and dying captured Yankee uniforms because they couldn't get the good gray material?"

"That was after the Union blockade of the South had become effective," Pat argued. "Can you see the Turnbulls, father or son, riding off to war without the whole bit-spurs jingling, blooded horses prancing, gold epaulets and shiny swords?"

Mark snickered. "It's getting to you, isn't it? You talk about them as if you knew them personally-predicting what they would say and do."

"Get lost," Pat said.

"Okay." Mark took a book in one hand and Kathy's wrist in the other. "We're going in the next room to work. Don't worry, we'll leave the door open."

This shaft of irony was directed at Josef, who responded with a raised eyebrow, but made no verbal comment. When the two had disappeared into the adjoining room, he spoke to Pat in a low voice.

"What is he driving at?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Maybe I'm unfair," Josef said. "But I swear that kid would make Machiavelli look like an amateur… Well, I'll see if I can find out what he wants to know; maybe then he'll condescend to explain why he wants to know it."

He applied himself to the book he had chosen. Pat tried to read too, but the low voices and occasional bursts of laughter from the next room distracted her. Thank God, she thought, for the resilience of youth. Kathy must be a lot tougher than she looked to have survived the arid childhood Josef had described. If her mother's warped views had scarred the girl, the scars were well hidden; certainly she didn't seem to find the male sex repellent.

As time passed, it became harder for them to concen trate. Josef's eyes began to stray from his book to his wristwatch. Pat had put hers in her purse in order to resist the temptation of watching it. Mark and Kathy appeared to have forgotten the time, but when Josef said suddenly, "It's twelve fifty," Mark emerged from the next room as if he had been propelled by a spring.

"Twelve forty-five," he said. "Your watch is fast."

"Turn on the TV," Pat said.

Josef rose to do so, giving her a sour smile. She shared his feelings; trying to clock a ghost by means of anything as mundane and modern as television…

But the prosaic nature of the apparatus gave her an unreasonable sense of security. Surely no evil spirit would invade a motel room while Perry Mason outfoxed another lawyer.

Abandoning all pretense at indifference, they sat watching Perry mouth dumb protests until Pat said suddenly, "Poor Jud. I feel guilty, leaving him."

"I wanted to bring him," Mark said. "But you-"

"He's too big," Pat said. She didn't want to explain her real objections to bringing the dog. His abject terror had increased her own. "Anyhow, he's shut in the kitchen, away from… I wish we could have located Albert before we left."

"Cats are reputed to be quite comfortable in the presence of evil spirits," Josef remarked.

"That's a vile canard," Pat said. "However, I think cats are more capable of avoiding unpleasant situations. Albert has not been around much the last few days. Maybe he doesn't like what has been going on."

The exchange was their last pretense at conversation. They sat in silence for the succeeding minutes, watching the figures on the TV screen gesticulate. Perry's triumph was followed by six commercials, a late news bulletin, and the "Star-Spangled Banner," as the station signed off. Finally, when the screen had been blank for several long minutes, Josef let out a long sigh and wiped his damp forehead.

"That's that."

"Thank God," Pat said sincerely. "Let's go to bed."

"I don't suppose…" Mark began.

"That we want to go back to the house and see what, if anything, your apparatus has recorded? No," said Josef.

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," Mark muttered. "Good night, all."

By the time Pat had finished her ablutions Kathy was sound asleep. The girl had been stoically silent through the last vigil, but as Pat bent over her, studying her pale face, she wondered how long Kathy could stand it. Even if Josef carried out his threat of selling the house and moving away, the problem would still be unresolved in the area that counted most-in Kathy's mind. She might go on seeing apparitions even after they had ceased to pursue her; and surely her mother's hell-fire religious notions must have left unpleasant seeds of guilt and doubt in her young conscience.