Twilight

by Nancy Pickard

  No shrug this time, although I felt like it. Instead, I smiled at him and just said, “Sure.”

  “Anthony Frederick Phillips.”

  We were lying on top of our bedspread, both of us trying to work up the energy to get undressed and get officially ready for bed.

  “The victim,” I said.

  “Fifty-six years old, widowed, a daughter, two sons, conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, moved around a lot, became a lay preacher the year his wife died—of cancer—and seems to have supported himself, barely, on the contributions of the various small congregations where he preached. Tended to gravitate toward causes and movements. Antiabortion. Pro-death penalty. Anti-sex education in the schools. Pro-prayer in the schools. The Halloween thing was the latest.”

  “Who told you all this?”

  “One of our guys, actually. You never know who’ll turn out to be a Bible thumper.” Geof named a sergeant, a spic-and-span officer with a stern, reserved personality and a paradoxically sweet smile. “They were fairly good friends, and our guy’s pretty upset about it. Says Phillips was a real moral guy, a straight shooter.”

  “That’s how he struck me, too.”

  He turned his head. “You met him?”

  “I told you that! Last night. Remember? How else would I have identified him from that cross?” Clearly, Geof felt the effects of exhaustion, too. “I met him in front of the Dime Store last Thursday. He gave me a lecture about the evils of Halloween, and he seemed quite concerned for my immortal soul. He also gave me this.” I pulled back the arm of my cotton shirt to display the long, thin, scabbed scratch. “Accidentally, I think. The end of his signpost brushed against me. I don’t think he even realized it happened.”

  “I thought you got that when Pete ran you down.”

  “No, it’s definitely the mark of—”

  “Cain,” he said, and his grin reappeared for the first time that day. We talked a while longer about my encounter with Phillips and my impressions of the man.

  “Fearless,” I assessed him, finally.

  “You think he was the type who’d run into a fire?”

  “In a minute.”

  “The type to set one?”

  “That, I can’t tell you.”

  I rolled over and pressed against him for warmth and comfort. “Was it arson?”

  “Apparently. It was set with candles.”

  “Is that a method that professional arsonists use?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Could it have been an accident then? A Halloween prank?”

  “Well, it was purposeful, wouldn’t you say? You don’t light candles by accident.”

  “But, I mean, candles can catch fire by accident. Do Nellie and Bill know?”

  “Yeah, and I’d swear they were both shocked by the news. Nellie says they always had boxes of candles back there, because they sold them by the gross practically.”

  “Are they suspects, Geof?”

  The question saddened me.

  “Owners are always suspects, Jenny, until proven otherwise.”

  “But the beatings, the break-in!”

  “Neighbors were unhelpful. They were all either asleep or down at the fire, themselves. It’s a hard kind of thing to investigate. Planned—look at the gloves they all wore—but senseless, on the face of it. They took nothing, said practically nothing, they came out of nowhere and disappeared back into it. Who the hell are they?”

  “First Things First?”

  “But why? We still haven’t located Lew Riss and his gang. Got any ideas?”

  “Well, no. Why can’t you find him?”

  “You sound annoyed.”

  I laughed. “Do I? I always sound annoyed when I talk to or about Lew Riss.”

  “We can’t find him, because there’s too much fucking else going on in this town, and we’re fucking running out of cops who are still awake on their feet.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  “You want to take a shower?”

  “First, before you do, you mean?”

  “No, I mean together, with me.”

  “You devil, you.”

  “Maybe that’s why I still smell like smoke.”

  We were still awake when it was time for the last local newscast of the day, so we watched it from bed.

  There was Marilyn Stuben. Did the woman never sleep?

  “Police report no real progress yet in their investigation of the highway blockade on Friday evening …

  “… of the destruction by fire of three downtown businesses.

  “… in the death of Anthony Frederick Phillips, a local man, in that fire.

  “… or in the assault early this morning of the owners of the Dime Store, where the fatal fire originated.”

  By the time Marilyn had finished her discouraging litany, Geof had sunk far down into the covers.

  But I had already beat him there, because the lead story that night was about, “the rumors now confirmed by impeccable sources that the Judy Foundation, organizers of the Autumn Festival that was schedule to draw up to fifteen thousand people to Port Frederick next weekend, have been turned down in their request for additional insurance. Does this mean the biggest event in Port Frederick history will have to be canceled? Tune in tomorrow for our full report.”

  After the news, I popped out of bed long enough to call Susan Bergalis, the MATV producer, at home.

  “Who’s your impeccable source, Susan?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Jenny! Is it true? Did you get turned down? We called you, but you weren’t there.”

  “Tit for tat, Susan.”

  She chuckled. “Ardyth Kennedy. But you didn’t hear it here.”

  “Yes, it’s true, but you can’t say you heard it from me until I call you officially in the morning.”

  I had to protect my source, too.

  “Will you really call me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shit, Jenny, is it over?”

  “There’s still the council meeting tomorrow night.”

  “They’ll never go against the fire guys, not after the fire last night.”

  “I’ll threaten to shoot myself.”

  “Jenny. You won’t have to threaten, ’cause they’re going to request you to do it.”

  Damn, I thought.

  “Good night, Susan.”

  “You who are about to be crucified, I salute you,” she said, and hung up.

  Geof was watching me.

  I told him what she’d said.

  “Nice to know who your friends are,” he observed wryly.

  “Even better to know who my enemies are.” I lay back down. “And I wonder … Geof? How did Ardyth know?”

  Maybe because I’d slept that day, maybe … who knows why … I woke up around three o’clock with an attack of the three-o’clock deep, black, heart-palpitating, cold-sweating, think-I’m-gonna-die terrors. Anxiety—no, hell, call it what it was—fear, lay like a monster on me. Cop in the bed beside me or no, I woke up feeling as if my worst nightmares were crawling into bed with me.

  To escape them, I fled.

  The bed. The room. The house.

  I dressed. And, driven by my demons of public failure and humiliation and … failure, I drove. Faster than I should have. Harder. Faster. Streaking toward I didn’t know what.

  “What” turned out to be the common.

  I parked, got out.

  There it was, the nearly finished construction of my ambitious dream. “You know what your problem is, Jenny? You think too big.”

  Too big. Too big.

  The bigger they are, the harder they …

  The road to hell is paved with …

  Too big for my …

  Fall. Good intentions. Breeches.

  Something was burning.

  A light, flickering in the middle of the common. A flash. A small glow.

  I started running.

  It was at the “Hyde Park Corner,” the ACLU’s platform
for free speech. Something on the platform was burning.

  I ran over the fall grass, the uneven ground, the leaves I couldn’t see under my feet in the dark.

  Flames, higher.

  Brighter.

  I pulled up a few yards from the platform, staring.

  What was it?

  Something attached to the tall post in the middle, something with shape, fabric, not a person.

  Closer, close enough to see flames lick black fabric. A dress? No, a robe. A mask with a grotesque pointed, warty nose. Pointed black hat. A witch. A costume, Halloween costume, nailed to the post.

  A witch.

  They were burning a witch at the stake on the common.

  In the distance, sirens.

  I walked back the distance to my car and sat there, feeling the burns on my own skin, fingering the ends of my hair as if they were singed.

  I knew who they were burning in effigy. Which witch. Feeling burned to my soul, I turned the key on my little white convertible broomstick and flew away.

  I found a stretch of beach, rocky night ocean beach, and a huddle of boulders where the sand wasn’t wet in among them, and I hunkered down against the night.

  Sometime between then and sunrise, I surrendered. It wasn’t a giving up, it was a letting go. And then I slept. And when the dawn woke me gently, I faced it with a strange peace in my heart, and I said, “All right. I accept everything. This is the way it is. I surrender. You may have me.”

  I stayed and watched her rise, my big, red, shining sister. There were shells to turn over, too, to exclaim over, and then to abandon to their destinies upon the shore. I took only a small souvenir, a spiral shell, ivory, a bit broken with a hole on one side in its middle, and I put it carefully in my pocket.

  The ocean was very cold when I waded in it, so I didn’t do that for very long.

  Like the shore after the tide pulled out, I was emptied, washed clean and full of the knowledge that the waves would return. Again and again. Bringing detritus to decorate the expanse of my life, and most of that—no matter how ugly or beautiful, how benign or dangerous—would wash away, leaving me alone and scraped clean again.

  19

  I GOT HOME BEFORE GEOF WORE UP. IN TIME TO MAKE COFFEE, TO put bacon in the pan. David had returned while I was gone. The aroma of the bacon pulled him in from the living room, grousing about the early hour. It dragged Geof down from the bedroom, happily hungry for what he was smelling. I put in eggs and toast. I decided that when it’s too difficult to “seize the day,” one could always serve it, instead. So that’s what I would do. I would not ask this day to save me or my festival. I would serve this day, and everybody in it.

  “Sit down, Jenny,” David said, “I’ll bring your plate to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, with a heart full of surprise.

  “When are you going to tell your board?” Geof asked me.

  “Board?” I stared at him. “Board? Board? Oh, my God! Oh, Geof!” I leaped at him, kissed him gratefully. “Thank you!”

  “What did I say?” he asked David.

  It was a gift from the gods, on a day when I wasn’t going to ask for anything. But what to do with this gift? At only seven o’clock, it was too early by at least an hour to call Polly from Portsmouth to check out my brainstorm of an idea. Suddenly, my nerves were ajangle again, only this time with excitement. I tried to remain calm, tried not to hope. Told myself it was only an idea, merely a last desperate wisp of a theory. But my heart lifted anyway, no matter that I warned myself against it.

  “What did I say, Jenny?”

  Geof wanted to know why I was jumping about the room like a crazy woman. Immediately, I settled back down in my chair at the table with them. I clutched the edge, breathed deeply—and smiled with such an enormous grin at him that it was a wonder he didn’t throw up an arm to shield his eyes.

  “I can’t tell you,” I said, meaning that I didn’t want to say it in front of David. “I’m afraid I might jinx it. In an hour—” I looked up at the clock above the sink, “—maybe a little later than that, I’ll know something. Then I can tell you.”

  “Is it about your festival?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  David said, “Is it about me?”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, guys, but I’m too scared to tell anybody. Yet. We have to change the subject. Geof?”

  “What?” He frowned at me. “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “She’s got a lover,” David said.

  “Right.” I smiled at both of them. “But I won’t know for sure if he’s leaving his wife until I call him at his office at eight o’clock, because he told me never to call him at home.”

  “Board,” Geof muttered, staring across at David. “I said board, isn’t that what I said? Did I say anything else?”

  “I went out last night,” I told them, a little desperately. But even then, they wouldn’t let me finish.

  “I did, too,” David said. He looked awful—dirty hair and face, dusty jeans and T-shirt—as if he’d been for a ride on his motorcycle and hadn’t cleaned up before sacking out on our couch again. I knew that underneath our table, his big feet were bare, but I chose not to look at them to determine their state of hygiene. “You want to know where?”

  “Yes!” I clung to any change of topic.

  Geof said, “How’d you manage, with that shoulder?”

  David didn’t shrug, as he normally might have, probably because shrugging would have hurt too much. Now there was an unexpected benefit to derive from his mishap, I thought: We’d get a shrugless teenager around for a while. He bragged, “I can hold ’er up with one hand. You want to know, or not?”

  “Yeah, where?” Geof obliged.

  “I went looking for the fuckers that did this to me.”

  He got Geof’s full attention with that statement, all right, and the cop’s attention deepened right along with the story.

  “How’d you know,” I asked him, “who to look for?”

  “Your friend,” he answered, accusingly. “That Lew Riss jerk, those First Things First assholes.”

  My initial reaction was to think, astounded: He listens to us. But that was followed quickly by, Oh, God, what kind of trouble have I got him into now?

  “David, we don’t know—” I started to say.

  “Any luck?” Geof asked him.

  The kid nodded, looking superior. “Leave it to me to do what the cops can’t manage.” (Geof forebore comment.) “Found ’em down by the riverside. But not until nearly daybreak. They’ve got a camp down by Crowley Creek.”

  “Out by the trail crossing?” I asked. “Where you got hurt?”

  “No, maybe five miles on downstream. There’s no real campground. They just parked and put up a couple of tents.”

  “How do you know it was them?” I asked.

  He gave me a look. “That was real difficult to figure out, Jenny. But my first clue was the letters FTF on the side of their van.”

  “What’d you do?” Geof asked him, looking worried.

  “I did nothing. Are you kidding? There was all of them and only one of me, and I’m not what you could call in fighting form, thanks to those bastards.”

  “We don’t know that,” I repeated.

  “Will you cut that out, Jenny?” He was angry. “We know that. Who the hell else could it have been?”

  “Tell me everything you saw,” the cop commanded.

  David mock-saluted, but then he complied. “Not much. It was night, may I remind you? Nobody was moving, except for one guy who got out of the tent and walked into the trees. Scared the shit out of me, because he came straight at me. I thought he knew I was there, and then when he unzipped his fly, he was so close I was afraid he would whiz on my toes.”

  “You saw just the one person?”

  “Yeah. Big guy. Not tall, but a muscleman.”

  I looked over at Geof and said, “Lew.”

  “Okay, what else?” Ge
of asked. “One van, two tents—”

  “Yeah, those rounded kinds, like igloos.”

  “Was there a campfire?” I asked him.

  “No.” He laughed. “There was a barbeque grill. You’re behind the times. Campfire! Who do you think these people are, boy scouts?”

  “You didn’t see any women?” Geof asked.

  “I told you, only the guy.”

  “How’d you find them, Dave?”

  The kid looked a little befuddled at that question. “I don’t know how I did it, exactly. I was just riding, you know?”

  We nodded.

  “And I got to thinking, how I got hurt near the creek. And how the creek’s lined with trees, all woody, and how that might be good for hiding in, and how maybe whoever did it, they must have come out of the woods, so they probably went back to the woods afterwards. So I cut off the highway and rode the trail—”

  My eyes widened. “God’s Highway?”

  Geof bowed his head and laughed out loud.

  I said, “David, you rode God’s Highway—through all those residential sections, practically in people’s backyards, on federal property—on your motorcycle?”

  “Jesus, Cain,” he said, “you think I was gonna hike it?”

  I imagined the roar of the engine breaking the night silence, and I shook my head and grinned.

  “Am I an investigator, or what? Think you’d better hire me, Geof?”

  “But David,” I said, “didn’t the FTF people hear you?”

  “They may have,” he conceded. “Because I was just beboppin’ along in first gear, when I saw them through the trees. Really startled me. Hell! But man, I was thinking fast, and so I just kept on riding. I’ll bet I rode another three miles before I thought it was safe to cut my engine. Then I left the bike, and I tiptoed back.”

  I smiled at the image. But three miles? I doubted it.

  “Good work, Dave,” Geof said.

  “Thanks. When will you arrest them? Man, I want to be there.”

  Geof was getting to his feet. “I’m on my way. Whether there will be any arrest, I don’t know. And I do want you to come along, so you can tell me where I’m going.” He looked over at me. “But if we leave now, when will we find out what’s got Jenny so excited?”

  While we talked about David’s adventure, I’d been keeping tabs on the passage of time: Still twenty minutes to go, before I could make the necessary call to Polly in the Portsmouth insurance broker’s office. “Looks like you’ll have to wait,” I told him.