John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

"Oh, come on," Janet began, but Corinne held up a hand.

"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, Corinne, nobody believes in that stuff!"

"Actually, a lot of people believe in it," Corinne replied. "And certainly Eulalie Cumberland did."

Janet's lips tightened. "I can't believe anyone would think-"

"Just let me finish," Corinne interrupted. "Nobody I talked to knew the details, but apparently the doll was found. And there had been a fire in the yard the night before. And after George and Cora Conway were found, Eulalie and Cora's baby were both gone."

"If people think Eulalie took Cora's baby, why would they blame Ted's family for anything?"

"Nobody thinks she took it," Corinne replied. "Everyone I talked to says that Eulalie would never have left Jake. He was just a child, and she was all he had. It's the one thing everyone agrees on-that Eulalie wouldn't have left Jake. If she'd gone anywhere, with or without the Conways' baby, she would have taken Jake with her."

"So what do they think happened?" Janet asked, though in her heart she already knew what the answer was going to be.

Corinne hesitated. Then: "All anyone would say was that they're sure George and Cora did something to Eulalie, and that ever since the Conways left this house, nothing bad has happened here."

Janet's eyes met Corinne Beckwith's. "And they think that now that we're here, bad things will start happening again?"

Corinne nodded.

"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?"

Corinne Beckwith's lips curved into a tight smile. "I suspect it will be a little more subtle than that, but I think you've got the general idea."

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 Corinne Beckwith-or anyone else-thought they would simply pack up and leave, they were wrong.

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."

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.

He scanned it carefully, though he was already certain of what it said. "Would you mind telling me who was asking about my house?"

This time, Amber Millard deferred to her boss.

"Well, now, that would be a breach of confidentiality, now wouldn't it?" Jefferson Davis Houlihan drawled.

Ted's first impulse was to ask Houlihan how many lawyer shows he'd been watching on television lately, but he checked the impulse; it would only anger the man. Studying the document in his hands again, he returned his attention to Amber Millard. "I'm going to need an application for a variance."

This time Houlihan didn't wait for his assistant to defer to him. "Not sure we have any. Haven't had any call for one in maybe twenty years."

Ted felt his temper rise. "Would you mind looking?" he asked, making no attempt to soften the edge in his voice.

"Don't mind looking," Houlihan drawled, lazily getting to his feet. "Just not sure where to start." His eyes fixed on Ted. "Maybe if you came back in a week or two…" he suggested, letting his voice trail off in an unmistakably deliberate way.

As he was leaving Town Hall a few minutes later, the first urge for a drink came over Ted, an urge that only grew stronger as the day went on. Everywhere he went, it was the same as at the Town Clerk's office.

No one was rude to him.