Evan shut the van off and waited for a moment in the quiet. He looked for some movement behind the opaque windows or a sign that he’d been spotted, but none came. The painting in the Kluge mansion floated in his mind’s eye, and he breathed deep a few times, calming the nervous tension that hummed inside him. He grabbed his cell phone and climbed out of the van.
The cool afternoon air bit into his neck as he walked up the steps and across the porch, his feet thunking on the boards. He wished it would rain and get it over with; for some reason, the feeling of waiting for it to happen was almost too much. He raised a hand to knock on the front door, but a voice filtered out from behind it, startling him, his knuckles still inches from the wood.
“What do you want?”
It was the same voice from the phone but with an edge to it. Evan wondered if there was a gun pointed at him right now.
“My name is Evan Tormer, I called you a few days ago. I just have some questions.”
“Go away, you’re trespassing.”
Even though the words sounded menacing, he could still hear a strange lilt to the woman’s voice, something cultured, foreign.
“Please, I won’t take much of your time.”
“You’ll take none of it. You’ll get in your car and go while you still can.”
The metallic click of a cocking gun met his ears. The fear of being shot by this strange woman in the middle of nowhere became overridden by the questions that plagued him, and before he could stop himself, he spoke.
“This is about your mother, Bella.”
Evan waited, the threat of rain no longer a concern, but the anticipation of a bullet punching through the door became almost too much to take. The seconds ticked by, agonizing in their unending length, and then a new sound came from inside, one that surprised him. Several locks snapped, and the door cracked open enough for him to see a gray eye surrounded by parchment-like skin peer out.
“Who are you?”
This time he heard a touch of curiosity in her voice.
“I’m looking for information, information about a grandfather clock. It was built by Abel Kluge. I know your mother knew him.”
The eye studied him, ran up and down his frame before the door slammed shut. The hope growing in his chest flickered and died. But before he could decide whether to call out to her again or give up, another snap came from the door and it opened fully, revealing the woman standing there.
The top of Cecil Fenz’s head barely came to his shoulder, though it wasn’t because of stooping or a bent spine on her part. She stood straight, dignified, with her shoulders thrown back, not rounded as he’d expected. She had silver hair, the color of the clouds over the house, which draped down her back in a ponytail. Her face had small features with articulate eyebrows that reminded him of the precise carvings in her eaves. She wore a painter’s smock and gray slacks. In her right hand, she gripped a large revolver, not pointed at him, but not at the ground either.
“Speak fast and clear, and if this is any kind of trick, things will not end well,” Cecil said.
Evan didn’t doubt her a bit.
“I’m staying at the house on the island, the Fin. The clock is in the basement. I started off wanting to write an article about it, about its history, but now ...” He shifted and glanced into the woods surrounding the house. “Now I need to know.”
Cecil studied him for another moment, then let the gun point fully at the floor. “It’ll rain soon, come inside before it does.”
She stepped aside, and Evan moved past her, into a comfortable foyer lined with paintings on each wall and wooden benches. Cecil shut the door and locked it.
“I haven’t had another person in my house for five years, and it would’ve been more if the electrical panel hadn’t shorted out.” Cecil walked past him, her slippers slapping against the wood floor as she went. “I pride myself in being able to fix most things. Saves money, saves time.” She gave him a disdainful look over her shoulder. “Saves conversation.”
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Evan said, following her into a warm kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows and a long breakfast bar at its center. “I got your name from the twins in town, Arnold and Wendal—”
“Peh!” Cecil swung her hand through the air in a violent motion. “Insolent old men have nothing to do besides meddle in others’ affairs and rest their sagging bottoms in chairs all day.”
Evan couldn’t help but smile at the old woman’s vehemence. She turned on her heel and went to an industrial-looking stove, where she banged a pan onto the top and began to heat water.
“You like coffee?”
“Yes, that would be great.”
“Good, because coffee and wine are all I drink, and it is too early for wine.” Cecil’s hand’s worked fast in the cupboards and drawers, but her eyes remained on the clouds outside. “But I may regret that later.”
Within a few minutes, she handed him a cup of coffee the color of tar poured from a brass pot that chugged merrily on the stove.
“This is the only way to make coffee, everything else is barbaric.”
Her slight accent became more noticeable, and Evan paused, his cup halfway to his mouth.
“You’re French?”
Cecil shot him a glance and then drank a sip of coffee. “Half. My mother came from France, my father was English, but born here.” She looked around the kitchen and shook her head. “The kitchen is no place for talk. Only gossip and food is made in kitchens.”
She led the way out of the room through an archway that opened up into a sitting room with an elegant glass table over ten feet long and several overstuffed leather couches. Every wall in the room held at least two pieces of art, and all had the same sublime look to them, their colors meshed and flowing in brushstrokes both bold and gentle. Evan studied the painting closest to him, a beautiful scene set beside a waterfall with stones of all colors bathing in its swirling pool. A boy lay on his side, dragging a flower in the flowing water, his eyes on the sky above him.
“I call that one A Day’s Dream, for nothing like it could exist in this world,” Cecil said, as she settled into a comfortable-looking chair.
“You painted this?”