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

by Charles L. Grant

  "Is it dead?"

  "Come see for yourself."

  "I really . . . just wrap it in something. I don't want to see it."

  "You'd better," he insisted.

  "Please. Ed, I've had enough."

  "Cyd, if I tell you about this later, you're not going to believe it. You'd better come over here and see what I see. At least, I think I see it."

  Intrigued, and revolted, she walked cautiously toward him, her eyes not wanting to lower their gaze, lowering it anyway until she saw the huge crow lying against the baseboard. From the angle of its neck she knew it was broken, looked immediately to the back of the door and saw a deep gouge where it had struck there head on; then she looked back down again, spun away to grip the arm of a chair.

  "Impossible," she said.

  "Sure it is. Impossible put this mess on my face and tore a hole in your coat."

  Her hand jumped to her shoulder where she felt the ragged gap.

  "But it couldn't be," she said, without turning around. "Ed, it only has one wing."

  Chapter 10

  "I still say we should have kept it and brought it in to Abe."

  "Oh sure, just like that. Say Abe, we have something to show you. Seems that we were attacked by a one-armed bird that tore a hunk from my friend's face here and ripped my coat to shreds. It crashed into a library door and killed itself. Sure. Just like that."

  "Wing."

  "What?"

  "It's a wing, not an arm."

  "For God's sake, Ed!"

  "All right, all right, but I'd still like to know how it did that."

  "So would I, believe me, but right now I have something else to do. I have to find out exactly what my father's up to, and since he's not talking, there's only one other person who can help. Then, Ed, we'll take care of that bird. But not before."

  "You're saying it's connected."

  "I'm saying that it's just after nine o'clock on a Thursday evening and I feel like I've been up for twenty-four hours straight and I'm tired and I'm sore and I'll be damned if I'll be stampeded into doing something stupid."

  "Assuming this isn't stupid."

  "One thing at a time, Ed. One piece at a time."

  "You know, for someone who's just nearly been nailed by the impossible, you're acting awfully calm."

  "Don't you believe that for a minute, Ed Grange. Don't you believe it for a minute."

  They drove the Pike carefully, Cyd watching the road grey under the headlights and vanish, an endless stream of transformation that made her drowsy despite the fact that she continued to replay the scene at the house so often it was becoming mechanical, flat, devoid of the terror that had engulfed, then left her. She knew that Ed was right, that they should be doing something about the bird, learning how, why, a dozen other questions that fought for priority when she let go the reins. But she could not. Dared not.

  You should leave, you know, a persistent thought nagged her. You're just like that heroine you laughed at before, opening the door when you know there're monsters on the other side.

  Could not.

  Dared not.

  No matter that her family had shut her out, no matter they had excluded her from the struggle to survive—they were, after all, her family at the end. Vain, foolish, stubborn . . . whatever. They were her family, and she would not leave them.

  Whether they wanted her or not, she would not leave them.

  She was about to attempt an explanation for Ed when he grunted and turned a final corner, a block south and east of the Oxrun hospital, and she pointed quickly to a small, ranch-style home. It was set back from its neighbors and surrounded as far as she could tell by an evergreen hedging carelessly trimmed in vaguely circular shapes. The lawn was unkempt, the concrete walk to the front stoop cracked here and there. But comfortable rather than decrepit, she thought; her mother would have said it had that lived-in look. The house's appearance was certainly not for Angus Stone's lack of clients, or his fees. Had he wanted, he could easily have lived beyond the park himself; but she knew him well enough to understand that he placed great store in living with himself as well as having something solid to leave to his grandchildren, that something being a small, impressive fortune in well-invested bonds and real estate in other parts of the country.

  When she knocked on the door there was no immediate response, though a light glowed softly behind the front window's white-backed drapes. Ed stood beside her, obviously feeling out of place, and she took his hand to squeeze it. When he grimaced she grinned, and the door suddenly opened.

  Stone was startled, recovered not quite fast enough that she didn't miss the expression. He was portly, short, his hair reduced to a close-cropped halo of lingering brown. Where in youth his face had been round from cheek to nose to chin, now it was slowly falling in upon itself and creating hollows where none had existed before, crevices where wrinkles had been, accenting the too-wide eyes that glinted when he finally recognized her. And had it not been for the animation that sparked him, he could have been called ugly, perhaps even grotesque.

  "My dear," he said with a glance to his wristwatch. "My dear Cynthia." He reached out to take her hand, paused in the movement when he saw Ed beside her. "Eddie! My goodness, a convention, my dear? Ah well, then it's obvious you haven't come by just to share a cuppa with me."

  Cyd followed him inside, amazed as always at the incredible amount of furniture and bric-a-brac he had managed to cram into every inch of space, and she almost laughed aloud at the thought that he probably spent hours every day trying to arrange some marvelous way he could use the ceiling as well for his myriad collections. She took the nearest chair, a Boston rocker, and waited patiently while the lawyer pointed out to a bemused Ed the various displays of porcelain and china figurines that ranged from a hundred breeds of dogs to Thai temple dancers to the small fireplace mantel over which he had taped and tacked framed photographs of himself with dozens of Senators, a handful of Presidents, Station council members, and lifetime directors of the world's financial community.

  And when finally they were settled—Ed in a Queen Anne brocade in royal blue, Stone on the deacon's bench in front of the window—she opened her eyes and stared at him.

  "The store's doing well, or so I hear," he said, a familiar tic marking a corner of his mouth.

  "It's only been four days, Angus."

  "A good sign, nevertheless," he answered with a wave. "I hear talk, you know. People are impressed. You won't make a fortune, my dear, but you won't starve either." He turned quickly back to Ed, a slight frown on his face. "Did you two have a fight, or was it a door you ran into," he said, pointing at the patch.

  Ed shrugged; the frown deepened.

  "Angus," she said before Stone could press further, "you were speaking of fortunes." She kept her voice low; there was no need to force him.

  "Yes, well, I was wondering when you'd come to me about that. Of course, I'd hoped things would work out differently. A pity. But I admit to being surprised, Eddie, that you've become involved."

  "I wasn't, until tonight," he said. "Things just sort of . . . happened."

  Stone waited for an explanation, looking from one to the other until he understood there was none forthcoming. He grinned weakly, pushed back on the bench and pulled from his tweed jacket pocket a meershaum that he placed between his lips and drew on dryly, left it hanging to talk around it.

  "Oh come on, Angus," Cyd said impatiently. "They're not going to tell me, so you might as well. I guessed this morning about the jewels and things, and I know now about all the other stuff."

  "What stuff?" he said.

  "You know, the library, the things Father's sold."

  "Ah yes. Of course." He began rubbing a thumb absently along the side of the pipe bowl. "You know, Cynthia, I'm not really sure I should be talking to you after all, since you've not spoken to your parents yet ... at least, you've not had them tell you exactly what's going on. I don't think it's my place—"

  "Your place," she sa
id quickly, very nearly harshly, "is to protect the family, Angus, and give us advice when we need it. Well, I'm needing it, and I need it now! I'm being prevented from having information I must have."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" She looked to Ed, who was staring at his hands clasped in his lap. "Why? Because I'm family, Angus, that's why. What affects my brothers, my mother, my father, has to affect me. And this is certainly not something that's not going to reach me sooner or later."

  Stone brushed at invisible ashes on his chest, tugged at an earlobe while he stared at her thoughtfully. "You're right, of course. At least, I think you are. I'm just not sure that your father wouldn't want to tell you himself."

  "Angus, he had plenty of opportunities this morning, believe me. And like an idiot, I took his word for something and let it go, thinking I would get to him tonight. But he's not home. No one is."

  "Well . . ."

  "Angus, how bad is it?"

  His expression was blank.

  A clock chimed the half-hour on the mantel.

  "Very bad," he said finally. "Very bad indeed. There are, of course, some things that not even I am privy to, but I think your father would not argue the point if I told you that he is very close to filing for bankruptcy."

  "I don't believe it." A declaration of fact, not an expression of wonderment.

  It was Ed who had spoken; Cyd was too stunned.

  "Be that as it may," Stone said simply, "I expect him in my office any day now. Any day. From what I understand he cannot last much longer."

  Cyd wiped a palm over her face, hard, slowly, hoping that some sparks of pain would clear her head of the roaring that filled it, and echoed. Then, a moment later, a glass of cold water was pressed into her hand and she took it, emptied it, touched at her lips with the back of a hand. She did not know who had given it to her, and did not care; she could only hear the lawyer's deliberately cultured voice droning through an explanation of what bankruptcy meant, what it would mean for the family's financial future.

  "My biggest problem is," he concluded, "I don't know where most of the money has gone. Of course, taxes both local and national make it hard for what we call the 'small wealthy' to hang on once the bites get larger, and if there's no extensive background of money within the family there's a natural tendency on the part of creditors to shy away from such risk-involved loans as would be needed in this particular case.

  "But that's not the main stumbling block. I've been trying for a year to break through your father's stubborn streak, Cynthia, and he simply is not being responsive. In fact, except for that day I gave your shop's papers to him and Robert, I have been virtually unable to communicate with him on any level at all." He examined his hands closely then, returned to rubbing the bowl of his pipe. "To be frank, as I'm sure you'd want me to be, I've been thinking quite seriously about complete disassociation. I refuse to work in the dark. It's as simple as that."

  They waited for her to say something; she could only set the rocker into motion and stare at the pictures arrayed over the fireplace. Feeling a warm and growing rage work round her heart until at last she demanded, loudly and hard, why she had not been told about any of this, why she had been kept in the dark, especially when she and the lawyer had worked so closely together over the purchase of the shop. And immediately she had done it, she regretted it. Stone's face softened, sagged, and his hands lay limply on his thighs. The Harvard genius, the courthouse scourge was gone, and in his place a fat old man with pretensions of power. She did not like what she saw, hated herself for prompting it, and when he spoke the answer was not something she had not deciphered already—he had been ordered to keep his peace, and in doing so had felt a well of betrayal. And that was why, she thought bitterly, he had not charged for all the work he had done for her, all the advice he had given her during their sessions when doubts had clouded her initial enthusiasm. He had dispelled them all with a wave of optimism she should have known as too great for his usual demeanor.

  But she had been blinded by her own dreams. And by a good deal more.

  Ed had risen and was standing by the hearth. "What did you mean, you don't know where most of the money's gone?"

  Stone looked to Cyd, who nodded an echo. "Just what I said. All I know is, he's liquidating everything he can in the shortest possible time. At a loss, I'm afraid, he'll not be able to sustain."

  "Kraylin!" she said then. "Damnit, I should have known he was bleeding them. He's probably got them hooked into some idiot scheme for that clinic of his."

  "You mean Calvin Kraylin?" Stone said.

  "You know him?"

  "He's not a quack, if that's what you're implying, Cynthia. He's quite well respected in medical circles, and I know from my own dealings with him that he has more money than he knows what to do with. He's not your man, my dear, if there's something illegal going on."

  "Are you sure?"

  He looked again to Ed with a slight comical shrug. "Just like her father, wouldn't you say?" He took the pipe from his mouth and tapped it absently on his knee. "Cynthia, you can see that I am rather overweight for a man my size. And that, as you well know, is being charitable to an extreme. While you were gone, not long after the first of the year, I had what Dr. Kraylin called a mild fluctuation. It's also what the hospital called it. But I was impressed by the young man's manner, and he's been treating me ever since."

  "Angus," she said, "Angus, I didn't know."

  "No one did, until now."

  She held a long breath, let it out slowly. "Angus, what am I going to do?"

  "Be patient," he said softly, rising and standing in front of her. "Be patient. These are hard days for your father, and he's not used to them. Through a series of misadventures, plus using some simple arithmetic, you've learned what he never wanted you to know. At least, not until he was ready to give you answers as well as problems. Be patient. Be patient. In the meantime, I too will do what I can do . . ." He sighed, turned and walked slowly toward the door. "I'm tired, my dear. But I'm certainly glad I'm not alone anymore."

  Once back in the car, Ed asked her where she wanted to go. She shook her head, waved her hands in an anywhere gesture.

  The fog had thickened. Streetlamps blurred like moons behind cloud wisps. Shadows lost their edges. The few cars they passed were moving at a crawl as though there were no light at all to show them the way. And despite the warm night it was cold in the car, and she hugged herself tightly until her arms began to ache.

  "Why didn't you tell him about the bird?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, you can't be mad at the old man, can you? He only told you what you'd guessed already."

  "I know that. I know that. I know exactly what he told me." And I wish, she thought, I knew what he hadn't said.

  She stared out the side window, at the black, at the grey, at a world that was keeping her more than just figuratively in the dark. Her left hand moved to touch her right shoulder, and her fingers toyed with the gap in the cloth.

  "Is it all that bad?" he asked gently. "I mean, losing the money, is it all that bad?"

  "It ... it isn't the money," she said, "not the money at all. I'm not so stupid that I won't miss having it around to get what I want when I want it. But that isn't the problem. I mean, I have the store, Ed. I know it's hard to believe, but that's worth more to me now than anything behind those fool walls on the Pike. For the first time since I don't know when it gives me a sense of ... it makes me feel as if I belong someplace. I haven't felt that way about anything, not for a long time."

  Ed shifted uneasily. "I didn't mean to pry, Cyd."

  "You're not; believe me you're not." She smiled at her lap. "You know, ever since I came back from Europe, I've been wandering around here feeling sorry for myself and soul-searching and all that stuff people go through now and then. But for me it was the first time. It's . . ." She frowned her concentration, sensing this was far too important to keep silent about. "Well, now I know how Iris and Paul felt when they were
let go. I mean, they worked for the family and all, but they belonged there. It was as much their home as their place now out on Hartwell. I never really felt I belonged on the Pike, not really. It was a place to go, but it was never really . . ."

  She could not say the word.

  "But now I do belong somewhere. The shop. And it needs me, damnit. It needs me."

  Another block of silence as they passed in turn the hospital, the Chancellor Inn, the high school, the police station. They slowed in front of the park gates to watch a group of boys trying to scale them, spot the car and scatter in a flurry of whispers. Then they turned east onto the Pike, but as Ed moved to swing into the Yarrow drive she touched at his arm and shook her head.

  He cleared his throat.

  "What you're trying to tell me, is that I should stop trying to propose, that right?"

  It hadn't been until he said it.

  "Ed—"

  "It's all right." He laughed. "No, it isn't all right, but that's the way it has to be. For now. You've got other things on your mind, like your family."

  Her gaze lifted by inches from her lap to the dashboard to the streaks of grey light that speared into the fog. The windshield wipers thumped like twin metronomes. Her stomach became chilled, and the chill rose to her chest, her arms, and faded.

  "I don't know them anymore."

  "I know what you mean."

  "No, you don't. I know what you're thinking, Ed, but that's not what I meant. I don't know them because . . . it's not them, Ed, it's not them." She felt hysteria forcing its way through the gaps in her words, swallowed hard to keep it down.

  "You're not making sense, Cyd."

  She felt the car slowing. "No, keep going."

  "Look, I think—"

  She waved him silent brusquely, saw him scowl then agree, and she wished she could be more precise, be able to tell him exactly what it was that had crossed her mind. But she was not sure herself. The idea that her parents weren't her parents, that even her brothers had somehow been substituted in her absence, was too farfetched to be granted credibility. Yet once said the notion stuck.