The Girl at the End of the Line

by Charles Mathes

  “You’re very logical, you know that?”

  “I suppose,” said Molly miserably.

  “I used to be logical,” said David. “I would look down the road, and if I couldn’t see my destination I wouldn’t take a single step. From where I stood in the District Attorney’s office in Stamford I could look forward and see my entire career stretched out before me, just the way my father saw it for me before I was born.”

  “Is your father a lawyer, too?”

  David nodded.

  “He was a founder of one of the biggest firms in Boston. He’s now a federal judge. Dad sent me off to the same private school where he had gone and then I went to Yale, just as he had. He even gave me a clear vision of the type of girl I should marry. When I looked down the road I could see her clearly, an old-money debutante, socially well connected and comfortable in the world, but one who wouldn’t commit suicide like my mother did.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Molly. “How old were you?”

  “Fifteen. It confounded my father when I turned thirty-five last year and still hadn’t married. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t looking ahead. But I was looking ahead. I could see the problems of living down every path I looked, so I never took any of them, never got involved with anyone, never formed relationships. I was just as paralyzed by logic as you are.”

  “I’m not paralyzed by anything.”

  “Yes, you are. Oh, it’s very intelligent not to make a move unless you can see exactly where you’re going. The only problem is that you stop living. From where I stood in my courtroom, I could look out and see myself thirty years down the road, as successful and respected as my father is. The only thing I couldn’t see was the mess and madness and elation that constitutes a life. Where are you going to be in thirty years, Molly?”

  Molly looked down the road she was on and she could see very clearly where she would be. She would be in a little antique shop on the outskirts of Pelletreau with her sister. Suddenly she was afraid.

  “Anyway,” said David, “since I’ve been doing Bank Street Story I look out and I can’t see what I’ll be doing six months from now, let alone in thirty years. There’s just a mist of possibilities. When I took the part in the play, my father thought I had lost my mind. I suppose I had, but I’m happier for it. I’ve become an actor in more than one sense of the word. I’m doing things, not fantasizing them; I’m living my life, not thinking it.”

  “You could just as easily say you were gambling,” said Molly. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll end up like Bobby Prince?”

  “Sometimes,” said David. “But I believe that we have to risk, to strive into the unknown without a guaranteed outcome, and learn from our mistakes or else why bother? And you do, too, or you wouldn’t be here in New York. You think you’re looking for your grandmother’s family, but you’re really looking for yourself. And you have no guarantees that you’ll like what you find, either.”

  “David …”

  “It may not be practical or logical or even smart for me to want to get to know you better, Molly O’Hara,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper, “but if I wanted to be practical or logical or smart in the way the world defines those things, I would be in a courtroom in Stamford today—and miserable for it. I hope you’ll throw out your logic, too, and just see where things go between us.”

  Before Molly could think of anything to say, Nell returned. She looked pleased with herself as she watched the shy, hopeful, frightened glances that passed between Molly and David. When Nell paid for the lunch with the money David had given her, leaving a generous tip, she still came out almost twenty dollars ahead.

  The three of them walked all the way back to the hotel, an impossibly long walk that passed by far too quickly. David pointed out the sights from Soho to Greenwich Village to the Empire State Building and finally Times Square. Molly asked questions, and tried not to look too impressed when he knew all the answers.

  David carried their bag to the Port Authority bus terminal, then waited with them, while Molly tried Taffy again with no results. He told them funny stories about the theater and New York and sad stories about the court system. As the bus for Pelletreau finally began to board, Molly and David exchanged addresses and phone numbers. They promised to be in touch soon—even though it made no logical sense.

  Molly’s thoughts were still with him as the bus fought its way through New Jersey and into a sunset made beautiful by all the pollutants in the atmosphere. David’s words were in her mind when she closed her eyes and fell easily into sleep. She dreamed of him as they sped through the night, and though she couldn’t remember the dreams when she awoke, she woke up smiling.

  When the bus pulled into the Pelletreau bus station the next morning, Molly felt the world was a wonderful place. She wasn’t even angry when she called Taffy from a pay phone to come and pick them up and found there was still no answer at the shop. Molly just shrugged her shoulders and shook her head as she bundled herself and Nell into a taxi for the expensive ride out to Porcupine Road. She would simply take the full amount of the cab, plus a generous tip, out of what she owed Taffy.

  As the taxi drove the last mile of U.S. 29 through the lush, familiar trees of Pelletreau, Nell kept stealing smug glances at her sister. The whole way from the bus station, Molly didn’t blush once. She felt alive and warm and happy and wanted, and thought that nothing in the world could ever change the way she felt.

  There was still a smile on her face when they pulled into their driveway. But her expression turned to one of horror as she stared at the lot where their little white house with its cozy porch and black shutters had stood.

  There was nothing there now but a fieldstone foundation and a pile of charred rubble with a few blacked spars of timber protruding from the ashes. The burned-out shell of what had once been a white van sat underneath the collapsed carport. Molly blinked her eyes again and again, but the impossible picture wouldn’t change.

  Enchanted Cottage Antiques was gone.

  Seven

  “Blown to smithereens,” said Stanley Hupperman, shaking his head and causing the great wattles of flesh beneath his chins to flap together audibly. “Poor little Taffy. She’s singing with the Heavenly Choir now. She’s singing to Jesus.”

  Molly nodded soberly. Taffy had been like a force of nature. As much as Molly didn’t want to admit it, she had been their best friend. It was still hard to believe she was dead.

  “And this office is going to miss Alice Markham, too, let me tell you,” Mr. Hupperman went on, repeating what he had said endlessly at the funeral on Sunday. “She wasn’t just another pretty face, you know. Alice was smart as whip. She went to classes every night after work, studying for her CPA. And she was quite a dancer, I understand.”

  Though Mr. Hupperman resembled Taffy in terms of size and shape, his voice was nothing like hers. It was deep and soft and sibilant, like the hiss of a steam radiator or bacon frying on a griddle. Sitting in a leather armchair behind his big desk, he looked like a walrus in a shirt and tie.

  “I remember how pleased Mrs. Hupperman and I were when the two of them became friends,” he went on, his eyes watery. “Alice was such a live wire. We really thought she could help poor Taffy come out of her shell, maybe meet a nice fella and settle down. Taffy was always such a shy, sensitive little thing, God rest her soul.”

  Molly nodded again. Mr. Hupperman had never had any idea who his daughter was. There was no point in shattering his illusions now.

  Molly glanced over at her sister, but couldn’t catch her eye. Nell was curled up in the second chair in Taffy’s father’s private office at Hupperman Insurance, staring out the window. Since they had returned to Pelletreau and found Enchanted Cottage Antiques in ashes, Nell had retreated further into her own silent world. The lively vivacious young woman who had danced the night away with the Broadway gypsies was gone, replaced by a zombie. It made Molly sick inside every time she saw her.

  The past five days still seemed like
some kind of surreal nightmare.

  After the shock of finding their home and business destroyed, Molly had spent endless, excruciating hours with police officers and functionaries, answering questions and going over and over details.

  She remembered that Nell had cleared the books out of their ancient gas stove and heated up a casserole before they had gone to see Clyde and their father last Tuesday (had they left for New York City only a week ago? Molly wondered—it seemed like a lifetime had passed since then).

  Molly was certain that they had turned off the gas, but somehow there had been a leak. Exactly what had caused it would never be known since the explosion and the ensuing fire had destroyed everything. Molly was also convinced that they would have left some windows open before going out—it had been a hot day, she remembered—but apparently they hadn’t.

  The final link in the deadly chain of events had been a faulty light switch, according to the police. After Taffy had dropped Molly and Nell off at the bus station, she had driven directly to Enchanted Cottage Antiques with Alice Markham, opened the back door, and flipped on the lights. The light switch had sparked, igniting the built-up gas fumes, and everything had been blown to smithereens as Mr. Hupperman had so eloquently put it.

  That was why Taffy hadn’t answered the phone when Molly had called the shop from New York before going off with David last Thursday morning. There had been no phone left to answer after Tuesday night. There had been no shop. There had been no Taffy.

  The police had naturally assumed that the fragments of two female bodies, found in the charred remains of Enchanted Cottage Antiques, were Molly and Nell. Taffy had been about Nell’s height, and Alice Markham had resembled Molly in stature. The O’Hara sisters’ deaths had made the front page of the newspaper. They had even printed Molly’s high school yearbook picture. Perky young antique dealers weren’t blown to smithereens every day in Pelletreau.

  The police had been surprisingly sensitive, going through their questions without pressure, bringing Molly coffee, keeping their distance from Nell so as not to upset her more. One detective still remembered their mother’s unsolved murder, having worked on the case.

  Sergeant Arlo Couvertie had listened respectfully when Molly told him about the red-haired man with the mustache who had been at the nursing home before Margaret Jellinek died, and who had reappeared at the funeral and driven by their shop.

  “He was going to kill us, just like he killed Grandma,” Molly had said calmly. “We had been inside since Grandma’s funeral. He must have been waiting for us to leave the house. When we did, he broke in, fiddled with the switch, closed the windows, and turned on the gas.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no evidence of that, Miss O’Hara,” Couvertie had replied. “There’s no evidence that this man even existed. I called the nursing home like you said. The receptionist on duty, a Mrs. Springer, doesn’t recall any such male visitor to Mrs. Jellinek before her death. Of course, she didn’t remember you and your sister, either.”

  “He killed Grandma. I know it. And he was going to kill us. We were the ones who were supposed to die when the house blew up.”

  Molly had not even felt frightened when she said it, though the fear had grown over the past few days. She had merely felt sure.

  “Why would someone want to kill you, Miss O’Hara?” Covertie had asked. “Why would someone want to kill your grandmother?”

  “Because …” Molly had begun, ready to tell him about the emerald ring. She had stopped in midsentence.

  If the redheaded man had smothered Margaret Jellinek to get her ring, why would he rig an explosion for Molly and Nell? If he believed they were now in possession of the emerald, why blow them up and risk losing it entirely if they happened to have it with them? Or what if they had hidden it in the shop? As a motive for murder, the ring made no sense.

  Besides, Molly still didn’t know where her grandmother had gotten the emerald. She couldn’t believe the ring was stolen, but telling the police about it was a can of worms that was better left unopened. Her dealer’s instinct for secrecy took over. She shook her head.

  “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill us,” Molly had said honestly.

  “If you like, we can get a court order and have your grandmother’s body exhumed,” Sergeant Couvertie had offered. “It’s not going to be easy for the coroner to confirm a cause of death on an embalmed body, but we’ll try if that’s what you want.”

  Molly couldn’t bear the thought.

  Instead she just had the sergeant call Oscar Winnick and let him know what had happened so the shock wouldn’t be great when Molly got on the phone and asked if the old jeweler could put them up until they could get resettled. They had no other place to stay.

  “So, what can we do for you, Mr. Hupperman?” said Molly wearily, snapping back to the present.

  “Beg pardon?” said Stanley Hupperman, lost in thoughts of his own as he gazed at the framed photo on his desk of a six-year-old Taffy in a pink crinoline dress licking a lollipop.

  Molly still felt guilty and horrible that Taffy had died in an “accident” that rightly should have killed Molly and Nell, but Mr. Hupperman had been incredibly decent about everything, not blaming anyone, just babbling on about his dear sweet little girl. Mrs. Hupperman had been just as nice, though she said after the funeral that she’d had premonitions of explosions ever since they had bought little Taffy her first chemistry set twenty years ago.

  “You called and asked us to come over,” said Molly. “Is there something we can do for you?”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said Stanley Hupperman, shaking his jowls. “I asked you to come over here because there’s something I wanted to do for you.”

  “For us?”

  He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a cashier’s check that he passed across the desk. It was made out to Molly O’Hara for more money than she had ever seen in her life.

  “I don’t understand,” she stammered. “What is this?”

  “It’s your settlement, Molly. The team here at Hupperman Insurance prides itself on facilitating benefit distribution in times of crisis. Your carrier, Mason-Dixon American Casualty, the Friendly Southern Neighbor, could hardly argue that what we have here is a total loss situation. I took personal charge of expediting the matter myself, felt I owed it to Taffy. The best way to cope with grief is to put on that harness, Molly. Start rebuilding right away is my advice to you.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Hupperman,” said Molly, staring at the check. “Thank you.”

  “I got something else for you, too,” the big man went on. “At the house on Sunday after the funeral, you were saying about how you had gone to New York, looking for your grandfather and all. All you knew was that he’d moved to England and married a Lady Stacey somebody, who was a dog fancier. You wanted to find him, but didn’t think you ever could.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, that got me to thinking. I needed something to take my mind off … you know. Anyways, it’s a whole new world out there with that Internet thing. You can do everything from ordering a truckload of gravel to reading the want ads in today’s Times Picayune. So I asked our computer genius to go out and see what he could find for you. Five minutes later he comes back with a name on the membership roster of the Chinese Pug Association of Somerset, Great Britain, UK. Lady Stacey Farfel-Julian. Julian, that was what you said your grandpa changed his name to, right? So we called up international information and got the phone number.”

  He handed Molly a Hupperman Insurance notepad with a neatly printed telephone number beginning with the 011 44 dialing code for England.

  Molly looked at the number and laughed.

  “What’s funny?” said Stanley Hupperman, smiling, too, eager to be let in on the joke.

  “It’s just …” Molly shook her head. “We go all the way to New York and come away with a blank. I didn’t know if it even made sense to keep looking, and now, after everything that�
��s happened, this just drops right into my lap.”

  Mr. Hupperman stood up from behind his desk. With one hand he unwrapped his sport coat from the back of his chair. With the other he pushed his telephone across the desk to Molly.

  “You’re welcome to use the phone if you want to give them a call,” he said. “You’ll have all the privacy you could want here. I got to take a meetin’.”

  “It’s long distance to England. It’ll cost a fortune.”

  “Now I don’t think we’re gonna worry about that, Molly,” said Hupperman with a tired smile. “Taffy loved you and Nell like sisters, you know. Poor sweet little thing.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  “Can you believe this?” Molly said, shaking her head.

  Nell didn’t answer.

  “What do you think? Should we call him?”

  Nell didn’t answer again. She didn’t even look around, just stared out the window as she had been doing since they had arrived.

  Molly went over and knelt by her sister’s chair.

  “This could be Richard Jellinek’s phone number. Grandma’s husband. Our grandfather, the actor, who changed his name to Richard Julian. We can just call him up.”

  Nell stared out the window, showing no sign that she understood. Molly stroked her arm.

  “I’m not wrecking your life, am I, honey? David thought maybe I was holding you back. You know, I would never want to do that. If you don’t want us to be together, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  Nell still didn’t respond. Sergeant Couvertie had thought Nell was in shock when he first saw her after the explosion and wanted to have the police department psychologist take a look at her. Molly had refused adamantly, and he hadn’t pressed the matter. Psychologists had gotten hold of Nell after Evangeline O’Hara Cole had been murdered. All they could think to do was shoot her full of chemicals and offer to fry her brain with electroshock. Even Clyde had been smart enough to stop them before they could do real damage. Molly wasn’t going to let them get their hands on her again. Nell would come out of this on her own. She always had before.