"Hi, I'm-"
"You stupid touchy-feely fuck—you were going through our stuff!" She hadn't waited for an answer; Lady Macbeth had her own script and she was happy with it, thank you very much. She took another step toward me and I could smell the sharp chemical tang of cheap-cured leather mixed with the need for a shower and some sweet resiny scent I couldn't immediately identify.
"Lx)ok," I began, gesturing toward the banner, planning some only slightly mendacious explanation.
She backhanded my hand away from it. I am not a small woman, but the Klingon lass had a few inches and a lot of pounds on me and she was wearing armor to boot. The metal studs on her wrist-guard dug into my skin with a bright, stinging pain and I heard her grunt: with satisfaction, with exertion.
I have received worse slaps from worse people, and because of that, 1 no longer handle being threatened in a particularly sensible manner. The spider kiss of adrenaline sang through my veins. I lunged for the banner again and this time ripped it off the wall, too furious to be wise.
1 whipped the banner toward me like a matador playing the bull and its sheaths spilled knives. Blades hit the floor while others, still caught in their sheaths, clanged against the bed frame as the felt wrapped around it. "Sony," I said, in a tone that turned the word into a threat. She'd struck where I was brittle, and I'd shattered.
Lady Macbeth was probably more terrorized by that than my grabbing her national flag. I think she tried to run for it but there wasn't a lot of room between the bunks; what she did instead was shove me hard enough to knock me off balance. I barely managed to turn the fall into a hasty collapse to the mattress. It gave us both a breathing space; 1 was still angry, but now not crazily so.
The Klingon hesitated over the spilled knives.
"Step away from the little lady," a high voice quavered uncertainly.
Lady Macbeth and I both froze.
Larry Wagner was standing in the center aisle near the door. He was still dressed in the Weight Watchers version of paramili-
418 Bell, Book, and Murder
taiy chic, but, unlike the last time I'd seen him, he was holding a gun. I wondered if Ironshadow would hear me if I screamed.
"Jesus!" said the Klingon.
I endorsed the sentiment if not the deity. It takes an enormous amount of either chutzpah or stupidity to go around brandishing a gun just after the local Sheriffs Department has spent the night asking you with all due politeness if you've shot somebody.
"Oh, put that away, Larry," I snapped in irritated relief. I was betting on stupidity. "Move!" I barked at the Klingon, who took the opportunity to bolt out from between the bunks. She looked like she'd be happy to get the hell out of here completely if Larry weren't standing in her way.
I didn't have that kind of problem. I walked over to Larry and belatedly realized that someone who'd walk up to a man who was holding a gun intending to clock him one was not as grounded on the Earth Plane as she might think.
But I do not take well to being threatened.
"Good thing I had this, huh?" Larry said. "Right?"
I barely did not hit him. "Put it away." The gun was tiny and brightly chromed; it was hard to take something that looked like it came out of a box of Cracker Jack seriously. Or maybe it was just Larry I was having trouble taking seriously.
Larry put his combat-booted foot up on one of the mattresses and pulled up his pant leg, exposing hairy calves and a concealed holster that had that "loving hands at home" look. He actually patted the gun as he tucked it away.
My hands were starting to shake from the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, and I was beginning on a headache for the same reason. It's amazing what your body can do to you if you give it half a chance.
"Good thing I came along, right?" Larry said. "I saw you heading this way and if I hadn't followed you, you'd be in real trouble now."
There was something childishly gleeful about the iteration, and I realized that if I didn't get Larry out of here reasonably quickly Lady Macbeth would realize he wasn't all that dangerous and either come and clock him herself or go for reinforcements. You might respect the damage he could do, but you'd never respect Larry. I glanced back. She was standing with her back pressed against the wall, her expression a mix of vulnerability and growing anger.
I grabbed him by a fold of his jacket and towed him out of the bunkroom. He followed me willingly, as if we were allies in some grand adventure, and 1 decided that the barn's main room wasn't far enough away. For one thing, there was a couch out there, and Larry is far from trustworthy around couches, especially when he feels you owe him something.
We went outside.
The sound of the winch down by the lake increased exponentially as soon as we were in the open air. Straight ahead was the wide dirt path with the cabins on the left and bushes on the right. The lake was beyond the cabins; ahead, the road went on past the cabins and then split, half doubling back behind the bushes, heading down until it reached the parking lot, half going straight on past Helen Cooper's house. It looked like a reasonably safe and public place to have a conversation with Larry Wagner. I didn't like Larry, but I prefer being in the right at all times and noblesse oblige until proven guilty was part of that.
1 looked back. Lady Macbeth hadn't followed us. I turned around, waiting for Larry to say something and reining in my temper. Larry regarded me with the sort of limpid brown eyes that make people want to take up vivisection of small helpless animals. There was a kind of desperation in the way he waited, as if he expected me to guess why he'd come after me. I could not understand why Maidjene had ever married him, but we so rarely understand what it is that people see when they look at other people.
The sun was warm enough that 1 contemplated taking off my parka, and remembered that I'd been in these clothes, what with one thing and another, since Saturday morning. I ought to get my stuff out of the cabin while I knew where Julian was and maybe take a bath in the sink.
It finally became obvious that Larry wasn't going to say anything.
"Did you want something from me?" I said, as politely as I could manage under the circumstances.
"You've got to talk to her for me. She'll listen to you. Hell, she's always listened to you; anyone but her husband."
"What do you want me to say?" I asked. 1 kept my face bland and my voice neutral. The discipline of eyes and face is the earliest survival mechanism, gained by instinct under siege.
"You think of what to say!" Larry said vehemently. "You and all your smart-mouth friends making her think I wasn't good enough for her—L/ou figure out what to say to change her mind."
420 Bell, Book, and Murder
I Stared at Larry blankly. I had accepted the fact of Maidjene and Larry's divorce so thoroughly that it took me a moment to realize that Larry hadn't.
"You tell her I still love her just like I always did—Wagner & Wagner, just like it started out; I don't want her going off like that." Larry stopped abruptly, breathing hard. His face, pale and pasty from junk-food diets and indoor weekends, was turning red; his breathing had quickened.
What could I say that was both kind and honest? Never kick a man when he's down, as the saying goes; he might have a gun.
"1 think that Maidjene has probably pretty well made up her mind about things," I said.
"She doesn't mean it!" Larry said desperately. "She needs me— nobody else is going to take her in —she's just in one of her moods. She'll listen to you."
Not if I told her to go back to Larry she wouldn't, I bet. I wished I wasn't here listening to Larry whipsaw between insult and pleading; a man who despised what he needed.
"Larry, I can tell her to be sure she's thought things out thoroughly, but ..."
"I don't want you to tell her to think! I want you to tell her she's making a big mistake. She thinks— She thinks I don't love her— but I do. I always have." His face twisted up in earnest and got redder. For a moment I thought he was going to cry, and I tried to feel sympathy for him and
failed. Maybe Maidjene had finally failed at that as well.
"Larry, you've been making passes at everything in sight for as long as I've known you, and right in front of her—is that love?"
"Men aren't like women," Larry said. "I didn't do anything anybody didn't want me to. Philly understood that—at least she did until she started up with all this Goddess crap. It was bad enough when she was Bom Again — and now I'm supposed to believe that a bunch of girls standing around naked in my bedroom can make something happen just by wishing and Philly tells me that some god told her to get a divorce?"
I'd bet dollars to broomsticks that Maidjene had said no such thing.
"Larry, I'm sure the two of you were very happy once. But people change, and Maidjene — "
"Don't you go calling her that! Her name's Phyllis. Phyllis Eileen Wagner, just like on our marriage license, and she's my wife."
He said it the way he might say; my car, with as much entitle-
ment and as little honest affection. And I was tired of this pointless conversation anyway.
"Look, Larry, what exactly is it that you want me to do? She doesn't want to be married to you and I can understand that: / wouldn't want to be married to you. Hell, I don't know why she married you in the first place —"
"Oh, you just think you're the cutest little thing, don't you?" Larry snarled. The down-home twang in his voice was stronger by the minute: he sounded now the way he looked, like a nasty-minded good ol' boy, the kind of reactionary that doesn't want to be bothered with the facts.
"If this is the way you ask for favors, Larry, I'd just love to see you try to piss somebody off," I snapped. "I couldn't do what you want even if I wanted to. Now leave me alone."
I already felt guilty; sufferance is not among my virtues. I tried to tell myself that a tonic dose of disenchantment would be the best thing for Maidjene's soon-to-be-ex but I couldn't really make myself buy it. What I needed was someplace to go that would put a final end to the conversation. I settled for walking off down the road. Maybe Helen Cooper would give me another cup of coffee.
"Who are you to judge me?" Larry yelled after me. "Who do you think you are?"
I stopped and turned around. You cannot reason with people like Larry, but sometimes, out of a despciiring sense of civic duty, I still try.
"I'm me," I said. "Everybody judges. It's called being alive."
"Yeah, well, you didn't like it so much when Hellfire Harm did it, did you? Called you Satanists and said you'd all better come to Jesus? You stuck-up bitch—maybe you didn't kill him but I bet you're glad he's dead. You're too gutless to pop him yourself but you'd sure love for somebody to do it; fall all over yourself crowning them hero of the fucking Revolution and be happy to do what they wanted ..."
They could probably hear him on the other side of the lake. I saw the Klingon woman watching us nervously from the doorway, and when I looked up I saw Ironshadow looking down from the second-floor window. At least there were plenty of witnesses.
"Larry, go away," I said. At least I could eliminate one suspect: if Larry were the killer there was no way he'd back off from cadl-ing in the "favor" now.
He smiled nastily. "Fine. I'll go away and leave you alone. Miss Witch Queen of the Goddeimn Universe. But you aren't going to
422 Bell, Book, and Murder
like what happens when I tell Philly about what you've done. You aren't going to be so high and mighty then."
We are none of us without guilt. The first thing I thought was that Larry had found out about my switching the Festival's registrations, and I almost fell into the trap of trying to reason with him that disclosure would serve no purpose. But he might be bluffing. Or he might be thinking of something else entirely. And at any rate, it was blackmail.
"Fuck off, Larry," I said, and turned again in the direction of Mrs. Cooper's house.
Larry trotted after me at a safe distance, trying to restart the conversation—which, since it had consisted of whining threats from Larry and abortive reasonableness from me, wasn't something 1 could see any point to, even if Larry hadn't succeeded in pissing me off royally. 1 would have preferred to feel compassion and understanding, but what 1 felt mostly was embarrassment. I wished he'd go away.
When I finally reached Mrs. Cooper's house, Larry was still following, but now it didn't matter. Lark's dark red Harley was parked beside the porch, and Lark was straddling it, talking to Mrs. Cooper. I walked faster.
Lark grinned when he saw me. The grin widened when he looked past me; I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Larry shuffling off toward the parking lot, trying to look as if that had been his destination all along.
"1 sure hope he wasn't planning on going anywhere — not with four flat tires," Lark said when 1 reached him.
"And good morning to you, too," I said. 1 wondered who'd done the actual slashing of the Winnebago's tires, though at the moment 1 was almost willing to have done it myself.
"Well, I can't spend all day here chattering," Mrs. Cooper said to Lark. "You just go and do what I told you and you'll be fine." She went in the house and closed the door.
The deep porch cast the front of the house into shadow, making it possible to see inside. Through the lace curtains at the window I could see Mrs. Cooper cross the dining room toward the kitchen.
"Look," Lark said to me. "You want to go out for lunch or something? There's a diner up the road."
I checked my watch. Noon. If Deputy Pascoe had got off work at six o'clock this morning, she probably wouldn't be hanging
around the diner now. Not that I had a guilty conscience or anything.
"Sure," I said.
"Hop on," Lark said. I guessed we'd forgiven each other for last night.
I swung my leg over the seat behind him. He handed me a crash helmet, a bowl-shaped thing painted the same deep heart's blood color as the tarings on his bike. I Velcroed the chinstrap up and put my arms around his waist. Lark kicked the bike to life and swung it around, heading down the dirt road in the direction of County 6 again.
There's something about riding a bike that's like flying. Your mind turns the engine roar into silence and you seem to glide effortlessly through the world. Everything's close enough to touch, and it's as if the bike goes away too, and all that's left is you and the speed and the wind.
I rested my cheek against Lark's denimed shoulder and tried not to obsess on what Larry might tell Maidjene and who was going to yell at me when I got back to Paradise Lake and how Arioch's blood had looked in the moonlight. I wondered if I'd come back here next year. I wondered if I'd be let to come back next year. I wondered if there'd be a next year. If the Klingon woman complained to Maidjene and was willing to complain to the Gotham County Sheriffs Department, they'd probably arrest Larry for waving a gun around today, but while I was even willing to believe that he'd given or sold or loaned the gun that had done last night's shooting, there was no way he could have either done the shooting himself or stabbed the Reverend Jackson Hellfire Harm Friday night. Not without bragging about it today.
The motorcycle's engine vibrated up through my spine, making my scalp tingle. I wished, now, that I'd gotten a better look at the Klingon knife banner I'd had my hands on so briefly. My impressions weren't very clear, but it seemed to me that it'd been heavier than it would have been if it contained ordinary flat-bladed knives. Had one of the objets decoratifs been a kukri? And had Orm Klash loaned it out—or had it borrowed?
But no. The Klingons had gotten to HallowFest after Jackson Harm's body was found and long after he'd been stabbed; none of them could be the murderer. But what if they'd found, or been given, or had the knife substituted for one of their own later?
We arrived.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8—1:00 p.m
We settled into a front booth in the diner where Lark could keep an eye on his bike. The waitress came. I ordered coffee. Lark ordered beer.
"So was Larry giving you a hard time or what?" Lark said.
"He wanted me to t
alk Maidjene into going back to him," I said. I wondered what Lark and Mrs. Cooper had found to talk about.
"Asshole," Lark said comprehensively.
The beer and coffee arrived and we ordered — bacon cheeseburger platters all 'round. I told my arteries I'd be virtuous later, although living in the Big Apple is such a health hazard by itself that it hardly matters what else you do with your life.
"So," 1 said, when the waitress had gone. "Where are you heading off to tomorrow?"
"Down to the city." 'The city" means New York, always; every other local habitation has a name, but New York is the only city.
Lark pulled the sugar caddy over to him and began grouping the little packets by the designs on the back. "I figured it was time to start over. You know—live down my mistakes and all that?" he said with a crooked grin.
"Sure," I said, though I couldn't think of any mistakes Lark had made lately. As far as I knew, the biggest mistake in his life was his parents', who had named him Elwyn. I stared at the acreage for sale across the road. There was a stand of white birch, all in yellow fall leaves.
Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving? Gerard Manley Hopkins. I felt as if I was saying good-bye, and I didn't know why.
"You know," said Lark, "I was kind of hoping I could work with you, you know? 1 had a group out in Anaheim, but after what happened they decided not to know me. Big talk. All talk," he added a little bitterly. "Some justice."
After what had happened? Whatever it was, clearly it was something he thought I already knew.
"It's better than no justice, I suppose," the half-remembered tag of an old "I, Claudius" springing to mind. Lark snorted eloquently. He finished his beer and called for another and I started to worry about riding back with him. We were probably about five miles from the campground; walkable, if long. I could make up my mind later. Lark drank half the second beer in one pull, straight from the bottle.
Bell, book, and murder Page 48
