Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  He came to a stop at the railroad bridge, where the warning gate flashed as its arms lowered, slow as a ballerina. He emptied his mind of everything except inching his car forward until it broke the gate, until the Jeep sat as firm on the tracks as a sacrifice.

  The train pounded. The tracks began to sing a steel symphony. Ross gave himself up to dying, catching a single word between his teeth before impact: Finally.

  The sound was awesome, deafening. And yet it moved past him, growing Doppler-distant, until Ross raised the courage to open his eyes.

  His car was smoking from the hood, but still running. It hobbled unevenly, as if one tire was low on air. And it was pointed in the opposite direction, heading back from where he'd come.

  There was nothing for it: with tears in his eyes, Ross started to drive.

  Rod van Vleet wasn't going home without a signed contract. In the first place, Newton Redhook had left him responsible for securing the nineteen acres that comprised the Pike property. In the second place, it had taken over six hours to get to this nursing home in Nowhere, Vermont, and Rod had no plans to return here in the immediate future.

  "Mr. Pike," he said, smiling at the old man, who was plug-ugly enough to give Rod nightmares for a week. Hell, if Rod himself looked like that by age ninety-five, he was all for someone giving him a morphine nightcap and a bed six feet under. Spencer Pike's bald head was as spotted as a cantaloupe; his hands were twisted into knots; his body seemed to have taken up permanent position as a human comma. "As you can see here, the Redhook Group is prepared to put into escrow today a check made out to you for fifty thousand dollars, as a token of good faith pending the title search."

  The old man narrowed a milky eye. "What the hell do I care about money?"

  "Well. Maybe you could take a vacation. You and a nurse." Rod smiled at the woman standing behind Pike, her arms crossed.

  "Can't travel. Doctor's orders. Liver could just . . . give out."

  Rod smiled uncomfortably, thinking that an alcoholic who'd survived nearly a hundred years should just get on a plane to Fiji and the hell with the consequences. "Well."

  "You already said that. You senile?"

  "No, sir." Rod cleared his throat. "I understand this land was in your wife's family for several generations?"

  "Yes."

  "It's our belief, Mr. Pike, that the Redhook Group can contribute to the growth of Comtosook by developing your acreage in a way that boosts the town economy."

  "You want to build stores there."

  "Yes, sir, we do."

  "You gonna build a bagel shop?"

  Rod blinked, nonplussed. "I don't believe Mr. Redhook knows yet."

  "Build it. I like bagels."

  Rod pushed the check across the table again, this time with the contract. "I won't be able to build anything, Mr. Pike, until I get your signature here."

  Pike stared at him for a long moment, then reached out for a pen. Rod let out the breath he'd been holding. "The title is in your wife's name? Cecelia Pike?"

  "It was Cissy's."

  "And this . . . claim the Abenaki are championing . . . is there any validity to that?"

  Pike's knuckles went white from the pressure. "There's no Indian burial ground on that property." He glanced up at Rod. "I don't like you."

  "I'm getting that sense, sir."

  "The only reason I'm going to sign this is because I'd rather give that land up than watch it go to the state."

  Rod rolled up the signed contract and rapped it against the table. "Well!" he said again, and Pike raised one eyebrow. "We'll be doing our due diligence, and hopefully we'll finish this deal as soon as we can."

  "Before I die, you mean," Pike said dryly as Rod shrugged into his coat. "You don't want to stay for Charades? Or lunch . . . I hear we're having orange Jell-O." He laughed, the sound like a saw at Rod's back. "Mr. van Vleet . . . what will you do with the house?"

  Rod knew this was a touchy subject; it always was for the Redhook Group, which usually razed whatever existing properties existed on the land before building their own modern commercial facilities. "It's actually not in the best shape," Rod said carefully. "We may have to . . . make some adjustments. More room, you know, for your pizza place."

  "Bagels." Pike frowned. "So you're going to tear it down."

  "Unfortunately, yes."

  "Better that way," the old man said. "Too many ghosts."

  The only gas station in Comtosook was attached to the general store. Two pumps from the 1950s sat in the parking lot, and it took Rod a good five minutes to realize there simply was no credit card slot. He stuck the nozzle of the pump into his gas tank and pulled out his cell phone, hitting a preprogrammed number. "Angel Quarry," answered a female voice.

  Rod held the phone away from his ear and cut off the call. He must have dialed wrong; he had been trying to reach the home office to let Newton Redhook know the first hurdle had been cleared. Frowning, he punched the buttons on the keypad again.

  "Angel Quarry. May I help you?"

  Rod shook his head. "I'm trying to reach 617-569--"

  "Well, you got the wrong number." Click.

  Flummoxed, he stuffed the phone in his pocket and squeezed another gallon into his tank. Reaching for his wallet, he started toward the store to pay.

  A middle-aged man with carrot-red hair stood on the porch, sweeping what seemed to be rose petals from the floorboards. Rod glanced up at the sign on the building-- ABE'S GAS & GROCERY--and then back at the shopkeeper. "You must be Abe?"

  "You guessed that right."

  "Is there a pay phone around here?"

  Abe pointed to the corner of the porch, where a phone booth tilted against the railing, right beside an old drunk who seemed disinclined to move aside. Rod dialed his calling card number, feeling the shopkeeper's eyes on him the whole time. "Angel Quarry," he heard, a moment later.

  He slammed down the receiver and stared at it. Abe swept once, twice, three times, clearing a path between Rod and himself. "Problem?" he asked.

  "Must be something screwed up in the phone lines." Rod dug a twenty out of his wallet for the gas.

  "Must be. Or maybe what those Indians are saying's true--that if they don't get their land back, the whole town'll be cursed."

  Rod rolled his eyes. He was halfway back to the car by the time he recalled Spencer Pike's comment about ghosts. He turned around to ask Abe about that, but the man was gone. His broom rested against the splintered porch rail; with each breeze, the neat pile of flower petals scattered like wishes.

  Suddenly a car pulled up on the opposite side of the gas pumps. A man with shoulder-length brown hair and unsettling sea green eyes stepped out and stretched until his back popped. "Excuse me," he asked, "do you know the way to Shelby Wakeman's house?"

  Rod shook his head. "I'm not from around here."

  He didn't know what made him look in the rearview mirror after he got into the car. The man was still standing there, as if he did not understand what should happen next. Suddenly Rod's cell phone began to ring. He dug in his breast pocket, flipped it open. "Van Vleet."

  "Angel Quarry," said the woman at the other end, as if he'd been the one to call; as if that made any sense at all.

  "Yeah, I'm coming," Shelby muttered, as the raps on her front door grew louder. It was only 11 A.M. If this moron woke Ethan . . . She knotted her hair into a ponytail holder, tugged her pajamas to rights, and squinted against the sun as she opened the door. For a moment, backlit by the daylight, she didn't recognize him.

  "Shel?"

  It had been two years since she'd seen Ross. They still looked alike--the same rangy build, the same intense pale gaze that people found it hard to break away from. But Ross had lost weight and let his hair grow long. And oh, the circles under his eyes--they were even darker than her own.

  "I woke you up," he apologized. "I could . . ."

  "Come here," Shelby finished, and she folded her baby brother into an embrace.

  "Go back to sleep,"