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"The house itself, and your husband's family," Cori
"Perhaps it was stillborn," Janet suggested.
"Even with a stillbirth, there should be a record. And there's something else. You remember the man outside the cemetery yesterday. Jake Cumberland?"
Janet almost shuddered. "I'll never forget him. The way he was looking at us. It was like he hated us, even though he's never met us."
"He probably does," Cori
"Disappeared?" Janet repeated. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"I'm not sure what I mean, either," Cori
"Oh, come on," Janet began, but Cori
"Let me finish. From what I've heard, Eulalie thought there was something 'evil'-that was the exact word she used, according to everyone I talked to-going on here, and she decided to put a stop to it. Apparently she made a doll."
"A voodoo doll?" Janet echoed, her voice incredulous. "Come on, Cori
"Actually, a lot of people believe in it," Cori
Janet's lips tightened. "I can't believe anyone would think-"
"Just let me finish," Cori
"If people think Eulalie took Cora's baby, why would they blame Ted's family for anything?"
"Nobody thinks she took it," Cori
"So what do they think happened?" Janet asked, though in her heart she already knew what the answer was going to be.
Cori
Janet's eyes met Cori
Cori
"I don't believe it!" Janet said, trying to contain her anger. "What are they going to do, come after us with pitchforks, like the villagers in Frankenstein?"
Cori
Janet's outrage coalesced into cold determination. All the doubts she'd had about Ted's ability to do what he'd promised vanished. If Cori
Dead wrong.
"That's not going to happen," she said quietly. "If we leave, it will be because of our own failures. But nobody's going to drive us away. Nobody."
CHAPTER 11
Ted sat in the comforting darkness of the bar, staring at the drink in front of him. Straight vodka, with just a twist of lime for flavor. In the back of his mind a tiny voice whispered to him to leave the drink where it was, and go home.
Shut up, he silently whispered back. It's just one drink, and I deserve it. Anybody would!
He lifted the glass and stared at the clear liquid for a long moment, as if daring the voice in the back of his mind to challenge him again.
It remained silent, and Ted raised the glass to his lips, drained it, then lowered it to the bar and nudged it toward the bartender, who immediately responded to the unspoken request. As the bartender-another Tony, for Christ's sake-refilled his glass, Ted studied himself in the mirror behind the bar. What the hell had everyone been staring at all day? There wasn't anything wrong with the way he looked-in fact, he looked a hell of a lot better than most of the jerks who'd been staring at him. But it wasn't just the way they looked at him that pissed him off. It was the way they acted, too.
It started that morning, right after he'd left the house. He'd been on his way to the Home Depot to pick up some wood stripper and a sander and the other supplies he needed to restore the dining room floor, but as he was going around the square in the middle of town, he passed a small brick building whose columned entry and small dome had immediately identified it as the St. Albans Town Hall. And with that identification had come the echo of the words he'd heard at his aunt's funeral.
"…there will be a lot of opposition to giving you a variance."
"I hope you're prepared for a fight on that one.…"
If there's going to be a problem, I might as well know about it right now, Ted told himself. He slid the Toyota into an open slot half a block past the brick building. As he walked back, he nodded to the two people he passed. One was a woman about his own age who was clutching the hand of a little boy who was perhaps a year older than Molly. The other was a man of about sixty, clad in overalls, with a fringe of gray hair sticking out from beneath a stained baseball cap.
Neither the man nor the woman replied to his greeting, though he was certain they'd both heard him. And he'd also had the distinct impression that they knew who he was.
The funeral, he told himself. They saw us at the funeral, and they've heard all the stories about Uncle George and Aunt Cora. Well, there were bound to be small people with small minds in small towns. But there would be just as many other people who wouldn't hold his family against him.
Entering the Town Hall-which at first glance appeared completely deserted-he looked around for a building directory and saw a sign on a door identifying it as the office of the Town Clerk. Inside, there was a long counter, behind which were two desks, one occupied by a young woman with short blond hair and a look of efficiency about her, the other by a man who looked to Ted as if he should have retired a dozen years earlier. A small plaque on his desk identified him as Jefferson Davis Houlihan.
The words TOWN CLERK followed his name, in letters just as large as the name itself.
"May I help you?" the efficient-looking blonde asked, offering Ted a polite if not quite warm smile. The plaque on her desk-much smaller than Houlihan's-informed him that her name was Amber Millard.
"I'd like to check the zoning on a piece of property," Ted replied. Was it his imagination, or did Amber Millard and her boss exchange a quick look? When he gave her the address of the house and saw the smile on her face turn brittle, he knew it hadn't been his imagination.
"That would be residential," she told him so quickly that Ted was certain she'd already looked it up. Her next words confirmed it: "Here's a copy of it. Someone else was just asking about the same property." Getting up from her desk, she came to the counter and handed Ted a single sheet of paper.