“As you yourself mentioned, you’ve reached the age of seventy-one. How high a price would you pay to live somewhat longer? I’m here to save your life, Aisa.”
“Again?” At first he chuckled, then he examined her expression and sighed.
Soon, NSIC’s resident corporate lawyer scurried into Aisa Garrett’s office, whisking past Mr. Garrett’s astonished personal secretary without troubling to be announced. Then the presence of the secretary herself was demanded. The secretary, a good-hearted, loyal woman, rushed to obey.
It was some time before Mrs. Risk emerged from the administrative offices, but when she did, she looked contented. She promised to return to sample Aisa’s wine at a not too distant date in the future and left. The whole event was a matter of some speculation among the outer office staff but was totally forgotten after the next Thursday evening. Because on Thursday night, Mr. Garrett died.
Those who remembered the witch’s close friendship with the old man and who might have attempted to console her were kept at bay by a new, enraged aspect of her solitude. She seemed to have tucked her grief deep within herself as she grimly pursued her inquiries.
The entire village mourned. Mr. Drexel was now considered by the village — although unofficially, until the formal reading of the will — to be the new majority stockholder, president, CEO, and chairman of North Shore Industries Corporation. As a result, he became too busy to bother about the rock star’s house any further. The rest of the village trustees understood find carried on without him.
On-site, Skip remained oblivious to everything but the completion of the house. Feverish with anxiety, he worked side by side with Ernie’s men, surprising them with his expertise, keeping an eye on possible dangers, and at the same time hastening the project to its end. He couldn’t wait for it to be finished. The whole scheme seemed to stretch somehow into a surrealistically endless time frame, like a nightmare.
But days were crossed off the calendar and work was accomplished at record speed. Occasionally, Skip raised his eyes from some task to see the witch strolling purposefully across the beach or road, but although he worked on-site from predawn until long after sundown, she never visited him. He was curious about her activities and their results, but a reluctance to discuss the matter kept him from going to her house and asking.
It didn’t matter: the only fact she might’ve told him was that the lab tests had revealed no surprises and would easily solve a pesky problem for the new owner: the spring contained pure, clean water. The well water was polluted with natural gas, which simply confirmed the good sense of the men in avoiding drinking it.
Only a daily ritual of visiting his post office box immediately after the noon delivery broke his concentration on building the house. His breath would stick in his chest until he twisted the key in the small door, opened it, thrust in a hand to search for that certain envelope which he would know by touch alone — and he would breathe again. Another twenty-four hours had passed without word from the anonymous letter writer, and Skip could go back to work.
Finally the last nail was driven home and stuccoed over. The moment had arrived for the next step in Skip’s plan.
After first checking in with the witch, Skip summoned Conrad to meet him for lunch at Harrington’s on the waterfront. Once there, Skip handed over a notarized list of items, complete with appraisals, that would be installed in Phantom’s house the next day (the result of several nights’ research, catalogue photocopying, and forgery on Skip’s part).
Phantom’s possessions were too valuable to spend a second unguarded and unsecured, Skip told Conrad. The house and its pending contents needed legal protection, even though the papers remained unsigned and technically the property and house were both still unpurchased. It wasn’t Phantom’s way of working to allow anything to chance. Everything must be insured, from the merest tack to the most priceless piece of art.
After an astonished pause, Conrad opened his mouth to say only he knew what, because Skip stopped him with an upraised palm and the words, “Phantom insists.” Conrad’s mouth snapped shut, and he hastened to comply. Within hours, Skip returned to the witch’s house with the signed documents. He hardly cared. The only document he was really anxious over hadn’t so far appeared... a new anonymous letter from the murderer warning him of some fresh disaster.
That night a sixteen-wheeler arrived and disturbed the peace of Mrs. Risk, who was the only human being within earshot of the commotion, their two properties being in an isolated part of town. From her bed she listened to the racket and shouting that informed her that Phantom’s “possessions” were being moved into his fixture home. She smiled grimly to herself. She wished she could be sure that what she was hearing was the trap closing around her quarry. She spent the rest of the night thinking.
The next day, bright and early, Skip did the rounds of the village employment spots. By midaftemoon he’d hired a cook, an assistant cook, gardeners, groundskeepers, a gatekeeper, a mechanic, handymen, and three sisters to keep house for Phantom. They were to report for work tomorrow at eight A.M., in time to look the place over and sort things out in preparation for Phantom’s early evening arrival on that same day. They were to be sure to arrive exactly at eight, so he wouldn’t have to spend precious time manning the electrified gate until the gatekeeper he’d hired showed up. Everyone promised.
Then Skip ordered food, household goods, and flowers from the specialty shops, delis, and gourmet grocers, to be delivered an hour after his new staff arrived tomorrow. This required the use of his remaining store of cash.
Now he was broke.
While these transactions were taking place, excitement spread like unquarantined measles until the entire village lost their collective reason and abandoned their shops and businesses. Who could work in an atmosphere of such delirium? Singlehandedly, Phantom had practically wiped out Wyndham’s recession. The mayor strolled Main Street chatting and shaking voters’ hands in case someone forgot whom to credit for this bonanza, and the trustees spent the remaining daylight admonishing the villagers to keep their “secret.”
As dark set in, Skip locked himself inside Phantom’s house to brood, convinced hell had arrived at Wyndham-by-the-Sea and he had brought it.
Mrs. Risk also remained indoors, at her own house, in case any of the villagers, deprived of a glimpse of Phantom’s sprawling stucco mansion by the enormous fence surrounding it, decided to see how a witch lived.
The sun sank in the west, spreading a hazy rose beneficat over the hysterical villagers, who simmered impatiently in their homes, waiting for Phantom’s impending arrival. Eventually the last bedroom light was extinguished, and everyone slept... or pretended to.
Around three in the morning, in the peaceful wooded coastline east of NSIC, an arm of flame reached for the moon. Phantom’s house was on fire. By the time a patrolling constable spotted the blaze and the volunteer fire department assembled themselves, the fire had become all-encompassing.
The electric gate must have jammed when the control box caught fire; it had to be forced open. Although the volunteers battered at the iron latches until they broke, it was too late to save anything by the time the trucks rolled up to the house. The hot, dry weather had primed the newly constructed building and everything around it to tinder perfection. Nothing was spared.
The commotion pulled the villagers out of their beds, and by dawn the entire population stood appalled at the sodden, smoldering mass. Their hopes, their dreams, their glorious future in providing a secret home for Phantom were no more.
Mark Daniels, everyone agreed afterwards, showed what a selfless, heroic human being he was both during and after the disaster. While the finished product of incredible organization, weeks of work, and probably millions of dollars’ worth of goods went up in a miserable puff of smoke, his main concern was that no one got hurt. While priceless works of art were being reduced to ash, he had patrolled the property, keeping rubberneckers clear of falling debris and smoke.