The Last Call of Mourning - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels)

by Charles L. Grant

  As she walked forward, trying not to weep, a man stepped out, saw her and waited. He was wearing the same styled slicker as the man on the fire engine, but his head was bare, his hair matted and dark. She stopped, then, and he moved toward her.

  I don't want to know, she thought; please, I don't want to know.

  "Miss Yarrow? Cynthia Yarrow?"

  She blinked slowly and refocused. He was sweating in spite of the cold, in spite of the plumes of breath seeping from his lips. He was tired, his face accused it, but his tone was gentle, and incongruously she thought of Calvin Kraylin.

  "Miss Yarrow? You are Miss Yarrow?"

  "Yes," she said quickly. "Yes, that's me." As he turned, she began to make her way on toward the door. "What . . ." She could not say it; she could only gesture.

  "Near as I can make it, miss, a wire shorted in the back. In that little office thing you have there? A spark dropped into a carton stuffed with a bunch of paper." He held out his hands, palms down. "Smoldered for a long time, I imagine. Never did get a chance to get going good."

  She reached the setback door and stopped again. There were spotlights inside, one on the counter and two on nearby bookcases. The carpet was stained black, and water eddied weakly about her boots. There were voices, low, and the shadows she saw flitting back and forth near the office grew until one of them paused, hurried toward her and resolved. Ed Grange called something muffled back over his shoulder, then reached out and took her arm lightly. Automatically, she stiffened to resist, thought better of it and nodded her thanks to the fireman as she was led back to her car. A static muttering of voices from the engine and patrol car radios; a cigarette flaring into the air, sputtering in the street, flaring again and dying. A car drove north past the scene, slowed and would have stopped had not one of the policemen leaning against the hood of his vehicle waved it on.

  "Is it that bad?" she said with a nod toward the shop.

  Ed was without a jacket, only a heavy blue ski sweater and white corduroy trousers. On his feet, she noticed with a quick grin, were battered bedroom slippers separating in places from the age-softened soles. His hair was such a tangle she could barely resist the temptation to help it find its place.

  "No," he said, "not bad at all, actually. That's why I want you to wait a minute, first, okay? If you go in there now, you'll think the place has been bombed. Those guys," and he waved toward the firemen now leaving the store, "they don't get much action around here, and when they do, they like to do things up right. It's like an accident where there's lots of blood, if you'll pardon the analogy. Better wait until the blood's gone so you can find out what the wound's really like."

  "Great," she said, beginning to shiver. "Just like a cop."

  "What can I say?"

  They watched silently as the firemen went about their business, carting the empty boxes out into the sidewalk and piling them at the curb where they were thoroughly doused and broken apart. She overheard one of them muttering about a frayed lamp wire, looked to Ed who nodded and shrugged. The patrolman who'd waved on the automobile earlier apparently decided she was able to answer some questions and asked her, politely, almost deferentially, for assistance with his report. When she was able to do little more than explain how she'd received word of the fire, Ed spoke up, his voice low and soft, pleasantly protective. Without realizing she was doing so, Cyd took hold of his arm as he explained he'd been having a cigarette in the small apartment he had over his office (the apartment having once been a psychiatrist's office that had been empty for so long, he had had no problem convincing the landlord to let him remodel) when he saw a faint flickering glow, knew immediately what it was and made his calls. The policeman looked up the street then, an automatic visual check that Ed could have seen what he'd claimed. The stores on Centre were all two-storied and mansard roofed and, though they were all joined at street level, the wide gaps between the roofs' double-sloped sides permitted views of the business district from the side streets. A quick nod for his belief, then, a thanks to Cyd and a murmuring condolence as though the shop were her child, and he was gone with his partner who had already dispersed the few curious onlookers.

  "Signs of the times," Ed said as the patrol car backed into the street and sped off. "Police station's right down on the corner and they have to ride, just to make it official."

  Cyd grinned, tightening her grip.

  A moment later, the hose had been dragged out of the shop and rewound on the engine. The firemen were already at their stations and waiting impatiently as the acting captain came up to her, his peaked hat in hand. She nodded and smiled. "Thanks, Artie."

  "Miss Yarrow, no problem, it really wasn't very much, but I guess Ed told you that already. All that crumpled paper in the box . . . the wire was sagging into it as much as I can figure. You must have left it on when you went home. Mostly smoke damage, though, and not much of that. We used less water than it looks. Give it a day or so and a fresh coat of paint will take care of everything." He grinned. "Of course, it'll smell like hell for a while, but if you keep the doors and windows open, that'll be no problem, either. And Miss Yarrow . . . next time, please throw out all your trash right away, okay? Stick it outside in back, in one of those dumpsters or in metal containers. I had a date tonight, Miss Yarrow. I just hope she'll be there when I get back."

  They laughed, more from the release of tension than from the joke, shook hands and parted. Cyd was grateful for the man's gentleness, despite the slight scolding, and thought herself unbelievably stupid for not thinking of such a simple thing as taking care of her rubbish. Stupid, she decided, was absolutely the right word.

  The engine whined, pulled away from the curb and slipped away from them silently, leaving them alone on the deserted street. The shop's open door was a cave's entrance, beckoning.

  "Oh well," she said. "I better see what happened to my books." She yawned suddenly, laughed when Ed followed. "You'd better get home, pal. You look ready to drop." She walked inside quickly and switched on the overhead lights, a series of three white globes ridged and slightly greyed now by the smoke. She winced at the stains that curled like grasping fingers out from the back room up to the ceiling, but as far as she could tell none of the stock had been damaged except for a few volumes that had been knocked onto the wet carpet by the passing firemen. On her way to the office she paused for a moment, brushed a hand over Cyrano's untouched face and shook her head slowly.

  And it was not until she had decided that what had to be done could easily be put off until tomorrow that she realized Ed was standing behind her. She turned and looked up at him, a sympathetic smile working her lips when she saw again the rumpled hair, the unshaven jaw, the demand for sleep in his eyes that he was denying as hard as he could.

  She ignored the stench of burnt cardboard and lingering smoke, the unpleasant give of soaked carpeting beneath her feet.

  "You saved my life again," she said quietly. "Sort of."

  "All in a knight's work, lady."

  She ignored, too, the pun. "Is Sandy all right?"

  "As well as can be expected. He's still shook at being nabbed like that, but you've got a friend there for life, Cyd. He was really scared. Hardly said a word all the way home."

  "He's a good boy. Always was. God, listen to me," she said then with a grimace. "I sound like a teacher."

  A silence.

  An awkwardness that soon turned her around to recheck the lock on the narrow back door— shaking her head at the firemen who'd forgotten to reset it—before following Ed to the front where she locked that door and moved out to the sidewalk. She had no idea how to leave, how to let him go after what he had done, was almost ready just to walk away when a notion made her stop in the middle of a stride. "Wait a minute," she said. "How did you know it was my store, anyway? And how did they get in there without smashing anything?"

  Ed looked up at the night sky and cleared his throat, folded his arms over his chest, dropped them, stuffed his hands into his pockets. He took two
steps from her toward the curb to open her car door, but she grabbed his arm and held him tightly.

  "Edwin Grange, what have you been up to behind my back?"

  "A lovely back, I must say. One of the nicest, in fact, that—

  "Ed!"

  It was one of her mother's favorite and oft-used axioms that every male had within his repertoire of begging expressions the standard little boy plea: Don't hurt me, Mommy, I was only trying to help. But she'd thought that Ed, of all people, would have long since abandoned such an obvious ploy. Not this time however. His right hand remained in his trouser pocket while his left scratched at his cheek, temple, into his hair and down to his nape while his face contorted into what seemed like a permanent grimace. Both hands and a foot in the cookie jar, she decided; but she waited to see if she had a right to be angry.

  "Ed," she prompted softly, the tone suggesting she wouldn't spank him.

  "Angus," he said finally, his voice hoarse until he cleared his throat. He checked the sky again, glanced in the direction of his apartment's safety. "I keep a file of store owners, you know, hit them every so often with one of my brochures for security guards, alarm systems, things like that. When I saw that carpenter go in there last week, I knew someone was getting ready to move in. So I asked around, Angus told me."

  "Well, why didn't you tell me that you knew?"

  "I figured you didn't want anybody to know. You wanted me to know, you'd tell me in your own good time. I know you, Cyd. I could wait."

  "And the key?" Immediately, she held up a hand. "Don't tell me—Angus. Keep an eye on the poor girl, Eddie," she said, mimicking the lawyer's deep-throated Harvard accent. "She's a fine one, she is, but she doesn't know her butt from a beetle sometimes."

  Ed released a long and loud sigh, nodded and sheepishly pulled the key from his pocket. He tossed it in the air and she snatched at it, stared at it, then set it firmly in his palm. "I would have given you one, you know. I'm too nervous, even with the cops just down around the corner. Have you ... I mean, did you—"

  "No," he said. "I haven't been in there once, not once. No reason to. Angus figured you might do something stupid like leave cash in a drawer after hours, you see. I was going to check around the first few nights after you opened just to be sure you were on the ball."

  "Oh, you were, huh?"

  "I were, yes."

  She grabbed his shoulders and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Stared at him for what seemed like the reading of a lifetime, and kissed his lips. Slowly. Gently. Pulled away before his hands could move to her back.

  "If you have nothing better to do tomorrow," she said, "I have some cleaning in there."

  "I don't moonlight."

  "In broad daylight, you idiot. I'm not proud."

  Chapter 7

  Too fast, Cyd thought as she skirted close to panic, but it was, finally, too late to do anything about it. The shop had opened and the aisles, if not crowded, were at least reasonably traveled. Whatever she had forgotten—and there had to be something—would have to wait until she'd won the struggle with her nerves to keep herself from screaming.

  The cleanup following the Sunday fire had gone quickly, almost too quickly. When she arrived in town shortly before noon both Ed and Sandy were waiting for her at the curb, pails and buckets, brushes and brooms stacked against the shop windows while they listened intently to Sandy's transistor radio. Before she had a chance to designate chores and set her priorities, they had already begun, paying her no mind and more often than not driving her into the back room where she hid, gratefully, from their labors. By supper it was done and, as had been predicted, there was only a faint smell left to leave a clue to the accident.

  On Monday, Paul ambled by in a worn overcoat and his crimson scarf, hands deep in his pockets and his eyes on the rooftops as he tried to appear casual. Cyd had grinned, had let him in, and had watched in amazement as he'd handled the newly arrived heavy cartons as though they were empty, studied the carpeting and ran off to fetch runners to hide the dark stains.

  Iris joined him on Wednesday, and it was then that Cyd began to wonder what she was going to do in such a small shop with two eager assistants. It did not take long for her apprehension to fade: while Paul busied himself learning title locations for quick, efficient answers, Iris discovered the ledgers Cyd had prepared for the accounting, found also a half-dozen errors that would have had them all working well past midnight most nights of the week.

  "You," Cyd said without a second thought, "are hereby my manager."

  Iris only grinned.

  The biggest surprise was Sandy McLeod. After insisting that he knew a lot more about books than it seemed by his grades, he had smiled and cajoled his way into a two-nights-a-week-and-full-time-Saturday job. Nodding toward the Lennons, who had been huddled over something in the back, he'd said, "They're going to get tired, you know, Miss Yarrow. And you really can't do it all by yourself, right?"

  Ed installed an alarm system, both burglar and fire.

  And two weeks to the day before Christmas, after the first ads in the Station Herald had announced the grand opening, she unlocked the door and stepped quickly behind the counter. Palms moist, stomach lurching, while Paul sat on the high stool behind the register and checked once again the mechanics of its working. Though Cyd had to admit the new machine was quiet, pronounced change to be made and automatically computed the state sales tax, she wished she could hear the harsh punch of old keys, the slide of the drawer and the announcement of the metallic bell that a sale had been made.

  Iris sat in back, in a new print dress and a gauze-thin scarf, clucking at salesmen's brochures, once exclaiming aloud at the lurid description of a new historical romance.

  An hour passed, and no one walked in.

  "Relax," Paul said when, for the dozenth time, she backed out to the sidewalk and studied the two window displays for errors or offense. As in the other windows on Centre Street, just a delicate touch of Christmas—no flashing lights, nothing distasteful or garish. "They'll come. They have the money they'll come." He sniffed and jammed a well-chewed, chipped pipe into his mouth, lit it and forgot it.

  Yarrow's.

  She stared at the letters. No mention of books. Only her name. It had been Rob's idea, seconded by Evan. They had come the day before to help her double-check for the opening, had been quiet enough in their prowling of the aisles, touching here, finger-dusting there until they'd announced their satisfaction and prepared to leave.

  "But what do I call it?" she'd asked in despair.

  "What's the matter with 'Yarrow's'?" Rob said.

  "What? But that's so ... I don't know ... it doesn't have ... I don't know!"

  Evan almost grinned. "Listen, Cyd, there's no need to be fancy in the Station, you know that. Just give it your name, like Rob says. People read the paper, they know what you're selling."

  "Not a bad location, either," his brother had said solemnly. "The bank next door is perfect. People make withdrawals and head up the street, decide to drop in for a look around and the next thing you know their envelopes are thinner."

  "Shrewd girl," said Evan.

  "My sister," said Rob.

  She'd worked past midnight with stencils and paint. Simple letters in simple proclamation.

  And just before noon the first customer walked in: Mrs. Angela Harper in her furs, white gloves, and a perpetual scowl. Cyd smiled as she greeted her and was about to join her when Paul took hold of her arm gently and kept her behind the counter.

  "Miss Yarrow," he said, with one eye on the old woman who had stalked immediately to the Gothics, "a word with you, please."

  "Can't it wait, Paul? My God, this could be my first sale. Ever. Do you know what that means?"

  "You ain't never been a servant, Missy. I have. Never dog the folks you work for. They need, they'll ask. You just watch their faces. They're afraid to ask, you just stand around a bit, just in range, and they'll get the nerve up. But don't dog them, Missy, don't dog them."
r />   An hour later she was fighting her panic: "They're not buying, Iris!"

  "Miss Yarrow, they're more curious now than charitable. What's a rich girl doing working a place like this they want to know. Did she go broke and 'we don't know it? She get herself tossed out on her ear? They're looking for gossip, Missy, a little bit of dirt. But don't you worry. Bookstores are like something ain't never been in the world—almost impossible to walk in and walk out without buying something. Even if you don't need it. It's guilt. You feel funny coming out empty-handed. Guilt. Don't worry, you ain't going broke."

  "How are you doing, Paul?" "You ask me that one more time, Missy, and I'm quitting."

  Dale and Victor Blake came in behind a huge bouquet of flowers, dragged her off to the luncheonette for something to eat, and never stopped laughing.

  "Paul—"

  "Miss Yarrow, why don't you take a walk or something?"

  By midafternoon the shop was empty again, and she moved slowly past the shelves, rearranging those titles shifted out of place, gathering the inventory cards that had been dropped on the floor. She searched for patterns of sale and rejection, found a few and scribbled on a pad she kept in her hand. As she drifted past the office she saw Iris bending over a low pile of order forms, sorting out the requests that had come her way once she had had the foresight to tack a "Special Orders" sign on a jamb near her desk. The woman sensed her, looked up and smiled curtly, returned to her work as though it were Cyd and not she who constituted the help. Paul was still at the register, smoking thoughtfully and watching the traffic.

  I don't believe this, she thought, straightening a low cardboard rack in a far corner. The fear that had assaulted her at the sight of Mrs. Harper had quickly faded to the nervousness that had made Paul irritable; from there she'd sidled into a numbing calm, her smile automatic, her answers to idle questions courteous and sincere but brooking no conversation beyond a few moments. She knew as she spoke that her manner still left much to be desired, but she had been unable to establish a solid contact between the real world, the world of her shop, and the people who inhabited both. By the time it was four, however, she hoped she was normal again. Not once did she head for the sidewalk, nor did she fuss with the displays or count the cash in the drawer. She left Iris alone, stopped staring at the pedestrians, trying to will them in like a psychic spider to vulnerable flies, instead picked up a volume of Yeats' poetry and immediately fell into the lyric melancholy that marked his Easter Rebellion stanzas and the eulogies they whispered. She barely noticed when someone stepped up behind her and poked a hard thumb at her shoulder.