[Oxrun Station] The Last Call of Mourning Read Free Page B

discarded like a doll.
    "You said," she muttered weakly, "something about a drink?"

2

    Diagonally opposite the Chancellor Avenue police station was the Mariner Cove, a low and long Monticello miniature less than a year old, windowless (for mystery) and signless (for confidence). The only interruptions in the clean brick front were two white double-doors; the one led to a dining room specializing in seafood, the other to a lounge heavily dark in mahogany and ebony, with carriage lamps on thick squared posts, exposed beams, and nightwine walls that felt remarkably like velvet to the touch. There was no music, no filtering of chatter from the adjoining restaurant, no flirtations with the waitresses or gambling with the bartender. Church-quiet. Relaxing. An island within an island for some to shed their tensions by sighing instead of screaming.
    The bar was in the center, surrounded by small pine tables and captain's chairs, in turn surrounded by a string of low-backed booths whose faces were artfully screened by draped fish netting. Red chimneys and candles. No tiers of bottles to distort the curved mirror as the bartender and his shadow moved swiftly, soundlessly, on a burgundy carpet.
    Immediately they entered, Ed led her to a table hidden on the far side of the bar, beneath a narrow print of the USS Constitution, He waited until she sat, lifted the raincoat from her shoulders and draped it over the rounded back of her chair. Then, with a shrug, he was out of his own beige topcoat and facing her over the chimney, the brass stand, and the unlighted candle. He glanced around the near empty room, then back to her.
    "Down among the peasants," he said with a smile.
    "Don't knock those peasants, sir," she said. "They keep the ladies alive."
    "Barely, Cyd," he said quietly. "Good Lord, what were you thinking of? No," he added before she could answer, "where were you, is a better question. Because you sure weren't there."
    The room darkened briefly, and she ran a hand through her hair before patting it unnecessarily. "I . . ." She swallowed at the bile rising, nodded weakly when Ed offered to order for them. And when the waitress, in a nautical costume complete with tiny cap, smiled at them and left, she gripped the table's edge tightly. "I could have been killed."
    Ed nodded, said nothing.
    "My God, I could have been killed!"
    And something denied it. People die; Yarrows don't. It was an axiom she had dedicated herself to since the death of her grandparents when she was less than five. But now . . . she cupped her hands around a glass the waitress placed before her, fought to find some warmth in the dark red wine within, her arms beneath the smooth cashmere sweater, the tightening at the back of her neck when, in her mind's eye, she saw the Greybeast again.
    And where had she been? That was simple enough. Perhaps too simple for the state she was in.
    The Station Bookmart had long been out of business, not for lack of readers but because its owners had decided Florida's Decembers were more conducive to long life than the bleak weak star that lightened Connecticut's winters. A jeweler had tried his luck there and couldn't compete with the others on the street; a lawyer tried it and didn't like the ambiance; and a toy store attempted a direct assault on Bartlett's, only to find that Dale Bartlett Blake was more than a match for an ambitious outsider. The shop had remained empty for nearly a month before, without warning, a grizzled workman in blue coveralls opened the door and hauled in all manner of carpentry equipment. Immediately after, he frosted the insides of the two narrow display windows, and several times a day since then someone would stand on the sidewalk and stare, trying to pierce the white fog and second-guess the new owner.
    "Hey, Cyd," Ed whispered. "Are you all right?"
    Her answering grin was weak, growing stronger, as she heard behind her the room filling with customers preparing a libation for the day-to-day gods