Wreck the Halls

by Sarah Graves

  “That's a quick switch to a new target, though, even for a creep like Peter. Faye Anne had barely been gone for a day when I found Bob's number at Melinda's. So unless he was bothering both of them at the same time…”

  She thought about it. “And I had the idea Melinda had been with Peter, when Bob was attacked. She was dressed up, you said.”

  “As if she'd been out on a date, right. But we don't know she was with him.”

  Something was bothering me. Two things, actually. What Victor had said about Willetta Abrams. And…

  The mouse had been inside the chair.

  “Ellie. Why'd Kenty say she was in the Carmody house that night?”

  Victor appeared in the doorway. “You should look at this.”

  Ellie rose up from the floor in the same graceful, no-hands way she'd sunk down onto it. “People like Kenty do tend to…”

  Victor looked astonished, which was unusual. He likes people to think he is so worldly and sophisticated, nothing can astonish him.

  “… embroider,” Ellie finished, as I followed Victor out to the kitchen. “When they're spreading any gossip it might as well be good gossip, you know?”

  But she didn't sound certain. Me, either. “I don't know. She made a big point of wanting me to know it. But she didn't want to talk to newspeople, because…”

  Ellie looked at me. “They'd check her story, wouldn't they? Or at least pick out shaky spots, not just accept it as gospel. And someone like Kenty who'd been in the business herself might be more aware than most: that if she did talk to them they might manage to trip her up.”

  “And she'd have known that if they caught her at the wrong time, she might not be quite mentally johnny-on-the-spot. Not well medicated enough, I mean, or maybe too well.”

  I thought some more. “What if Kenty never went to the Carmodys’, but she wanted me to think—and to tell people-that she did? Saying she'd been inside might make it more believable, she could have thought. One thing I do know, she was most emphatic on the part about not seeing anything unusual.”

  “But really she had?” Ellie frowned pickily. It remained a good motive for Kenty's death, her being a witness to something a killer didn't want broadcast. But it still didn't quite wash; I kept remembering those superthick glasses.

  Sam waved at the cardboard box on the kitchen table. “I can't keep this stuff. Dad says it's…”

  Ellie saw that Sam wanted privacy, and instantly made herself scarce.

  “… narcotics,” Victor finished Sam's sentence for him. “And amphetamines. Needles and syringes, a crude dilution chart, some bottles of sterile saline.”

  The collection included alcohol wipes: a hilarious nod, if you weren't personally involved, to the preservation of the user's health.

  “Just possession of some of these is a major felony. Opiate painkillers. Rohypnol… that's the date-rape drug.” Victor made a face. “You don't even want them in the house.”

  “I ordered them,” Sam said to me. “Tommy and I did it together, for our Internet project. The Web site where we found it said it was an organic mood-moderation kit, herbs and whatnot. You know, holistic medicine.”

  With the money Sam had borrowed from Wade… I just stared. “Sam,” I managed finally, “how much did you pay for this stuff?”

  He named a ridiculously low figure, which was when I got it: the package was of nearly free samples.

  Somebody was weirdly wired, all right; later, the price would go up. Sooner or later, whoever it was would get shut down, too—sooner, now that Victor knew about it—but not before doing a lot of damage. And of course there was no return address on the mailing carton.

  Sam raised his digital camera, snapped a picture of the items for his project, since a live show-and-tell of this material could get him years in the slammer.

  “Criminy,” I said, “is there any place you can't get stuff to screw your head up, nowadays?”

  “No,” Sam replied authoritatively, “there isn't.”

  “I’ll take it over to the clinic,” Victor said, “and call the Maine DEA. Don't worry,” he told Sam. “You won't be in difficulty over it.”

  Victor can be very effective when he wants to be. And reassuring; this I suppose is because of his experience as a neurosurgeon, talking to people so calmly just before he starts taking apart their heads.

  I followed him to the door. “You're sure Sam will be okay?”

  Because the thing is, I lied about him having been in a little trouble. Back in the city, Sam was the kind of kid who would sniff a vial of live Ebola virus if he thought it would get him high. He stole things; he shot up, snorted, and smoked things. And even though all that seemed a whole life and a world away, I didn't quite trust the notion that his juvenile record was sealed. And…

  “I’ll tell them I ordered this stuff on Sam's computer,” Victor replied. “That I was curious about it. So yes, I’m sure.”

  “Oh. Victor, that's…”

  Good of you, I was about to say. But then of course he went on to spoil it. “Don't forget, you promised to talk to Joy for me.”

  Quid pro quo, clearly. God forbid he might simply do a fatherly deed, no pay required. So I said nothing as he picked his way over the ice floe formerly known as my front sidewalk.

  Ice-melting crystals, my mental list recited automatically; pickaxe, dynamite. Closing the door, I turned back to Sam.

  “Listen. I’m sorry, Sam. But I need to ask.”

  His face flattened. “What? If I shot up some of that stuff? Got up to my old tricks? Yeah, sure,” he went on, sounding disgusted. “I get high every morning, Mom. Sit there putting my head together with a few sticks of primo reefer, just like the old days.”

  Which was exactly what I was scared of: the old days. But then he relented, coming over to drape an arm around me. “Mom. If it makes you feel any better, there's a meeting at the college on Wednesday nights. I’ve been going pretty regular, all semester.”

  “What kind of… oh. You mean Narcotics Anonymous?”

  He'd quit cold turkey without any meetings when we first came here. “No, it's AA,” he answered. “But it's a program. I figured, school and all, new pressures.”

  Oh, terrific. But his face was now untroubled. “Hey, I’m not too proud for a safety net. Besides,” he added with a grin that was pure Sam, “it's a way to meet girls who won't throw up all over the car.”

  I swatted at him, quelling the impulse to fling my arms around him. No doubt by now the dratted mouse was snuggled up in the heating pad, chewing on its cord. “Sam, run down cellar and unplug that pad, will you? It's a good idea—”

  His face brightened, reminding me to put praise on my mental list more often, too. That he wasn't using drugs was an achievement so huge that I tended not to see it; like a mountain viewed in extreme close-up.

  But my son climbed it every day. “I’m not going to be working on the window this afternoon,” I finished, pulling my coat on. “I want to ask Melinda where she was before Bob was attacked,” I added to Ellie as she returned. “Ask her myself.”

  Somehow Ellie always knows: when to go, when to come back. “Me, too,” she agreed. “And I want to see her face when she answers.”

  Hat, boots, scarf. Outside, a breeze made the naked branches shiver, hinting at weather; a storm was forecast to come up out of the Gulf of Maine, narrowly missing us before veering off over Nova Scotia.

  We traversed the front walk to the car; sand, ice pick, plaster leg cast, my mental list recited mercilessly. “You think she'll say? Melinda, I mean?” Ellie asked as we drove down Water Street.

  Out on the bay a barge loaded with fish food trundled through the grey waves toward the salmon pens. “Maybe. If she's got nothing to hide. She might also shed some new light on Peter Christie. Because it sounds to me like Mister Sensitive has got a real dark side.” A familiar profile caught my eye, as if summoned by my thought. “Look, it's him right now.”

  He was on his way into the flower shop, carry
ing Melinda's string shopping bag. A wine bottle poked from the bag's top, and through its mesh I saw what looked like foil-wrapped cheese, French bread, and a box of fancy chocolate.

  I slowed the car. He came back out, still too intent on his errand to notice us, a bunch of red carnations in his hand. “Looks like Peter's going courting,” Ellie observed.

  “This must be the carrot side of his carrot-and-stick approach,” I agreed as he got into his car, not seeming to notice us.

  Minutes later we passed the ferry landing, wooden row houses overlooking it, and the remains of what at the turn of the century was Eastport's gas plant. All that remained now was a massive brick chimney, swathes of round-shouldered red bricks all around it like pools of dark blood. Across the water the snowy hills of New Brunswick were thin white brushstrokes.

  “If she's alone…” Ellie began. Then: “Hey. Why are you turning here?”

  Melinda's lay straight ahead but I took the left up Clark Street instead. Along one side, a cluster of mobile homes strung with enough Christmas lights to illuminate Times Square huddled around a snowy yard crammed with work trucks, their beds full of toolboxes, ladders, and rubber weather garb. Lobster traps heaped on wooden pallets formed a ragged fence between each mobile home and the next.

  “Detour,” I announced. We passed Hillside Cemetery and came over the hill, looking south toward the inlet of Passamaquoddy Bay and the bridge that spanned it to Canada.

  “Oh,” Ellie said comprehendingly. “If he's at Melinda's we can talk to them together.”

  “And with a few slugs of that wine in them, to loosen them up,” I agreed. “Let's give them half an hour. Meanwhile, I have a favor to do for Victor.” I let my voice express how eager I felt, as I explained it.

  No reply. Ellie believed Victor might make good bait if the fish were very hungry. Otherwise…

  “I said I’d talk to Joy,” I told her. “So I will. I don't have to try to persuade her of anything.” Such as for instance that Victor was anything other than trouble. “Besides, she's a smart woman. You saw that. So it's not like it would work, anyway.”

  The gold rays of early sunset angled from behind clouds mounting threateningly from the south and the west. A left off Route 190 took us out the old Toll Bridge Road, to a warren of short, interlocking streets: Quoddy Village.

  Still no comment from Ellie. “Half an hour, tops, we'll be back in town,” I promised. In the gathering dusk we passed a rusting water tower, a barrackslike building that was once a Navy administration center, and a burnt-out house lot with plumbing pipes jutting up out of its concrete pad.

  “Ellie?” I glanced sideways. She looked worried.

  “Did you bring your cell phone?” she asked. “To find out if…”

  I handed it to her. “To check in about Bob Arnold?”

  “Uh-huh.” She tried it. “Jake, it's not working.”

  Drat; dead battery, probably. But we weren't going very far. “Remind me to charge it when we get home, please. But we can call from Joy's and see if there's news, if you want.”

  She nodded thoughtfully as we passed houses set on quarter-acre lots, the car barely crawling until Ellie spotted a brighter set of yard lights than the rest, and the sign for Joy's beauty parlor: THE BEAUTY PART.

  Much brighter. Joy's place was a double-wide mobile home with a slant-roofed, sheet-metal side addition, a long, plowed driveway, and utility sheds, all looking well maintained. There was a little shed for trash bins, a larger one that probably held yard equipment, and some foundation plantings. Each had a neat, securely tied winter jacket of burlap.

  Two vehicles stood in the drive: a new Dodge van with the dealer sticker still in the window, and a little white Toyota. “Huh,” Ellie said, blinking in surprise from the glare as we pulled our own car in.

  Because it wasn't just porch lights. Yard lamps, walkway illumination, a floodlight over the cars, and a pair of security lamps were all connected, apparently, to motion detectors. They snapped on one after another as we approached the deck made of pressure-treated lumber, swept clean of snow.

  A face appeared at the window. Another trio of bulbs blazed on, at either side of the door and above it.

  “Good thing George fixed that generator,” Ellie murmured as we climbed the wooden steps.

  “Yeah.” I knocked. Inside, women's voices: Joy and Willetta.

  “Are they trying to attract someone? Or keep someone away?”

  A series of locks clicked open. As I listened to them, my errand for Victor got steadily more interesting. Not that I thought it had anything to do with Merle Carmody's murder.

  Still, I couldn't shake the impression that the whole place was lit up like the tarmac around an airport terminal.

  Or like a prison yard.

  Chapter 9

  Really, it was too bad; up until this moment I’d harbored a secret hope for Joy Abrams and Victor. But stepping into the mobile home Joy shared with Willetta, I realized the futility of trying to convince Joy that her relationship with my ex-husband had a future.

  Outdoors, her place was a pristine winter paradise; I got the sense that if even a single snowflake were misaligned, Joy would be out there carefully replacing it atop a snowdrift.

  And the inside was the same. Joy glanced past us toward the yard lights. “He sent you here? Victor, to talk to me?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted, knowing now that it was hopeless.

  Smells of soapsuds and scouring powder hung in the air, and Joy herself was perfectly dressed and made-up as if prepared for a camera. She didn't seem to be expecting company and the shop looked closed, yet she even had her eyelashes on, LAir du Temps wafting sweetly from her. And whether or not she'd articulated it clearly to herself or only felt it, a woman in so much control of her person and her home wouldn't put up with being controlled by Victor. Or with his efforts to do so. Back when I was married to him, Mr. Don't-Move-A-Muscle-Without-My-Say-So used to choose my shoes for me, always buying them a size too small.

  She led us in, sat us down at a small table in the tiny eating area. A countertop with double sink and cooking surface, both gleaming, divided it from a plushly carpeted living room, plenty big enough for two people.

  But not for three. And still I spotted not a single thing out of place; in fact, there weren't really any things to speak of other than the neat, unremarkable furniture: no magazines, no old newspapers, not even a potted plant, and of course no messy woodstove.

  “Look,” Joy said, spreading her hands. Her apricot nails precisely matched the color of her elaborately done hair. “It's not so much that I don't want to go on seeing Victor.”

  Honestly, you'd have thought Joy and Willetta just sat here in the evenings, motionless with their hands in their laps; it was almost eerie. I glanced out at the snow spreading blue-white under the yard lights, shadows deepening as dusk thickened into early evening. The windowsill smelled of ammonia glass-cleaner.

  “Go on, Joy, tell her,” a peevish voice broke in. “Your kid sister has moved in on you, and she's ruining your life.”

  Willetta appeared. Wan and aggrieved looking, with lank hair and a spotty complexion, she was the before to Joy's carefully tended after.

  “Now, honey, that's not it at all,” Joy began placatingly.

  Willetta sat down uninvited at the tiny table. Four was a crowd but she didn't seem to care. “He's such a jerk. Which my big sister would ignore if I weren't around. But,” she finished smugly, “I am.”

  Yeah, and aren't you a little ray of sunshine in everyone's life? I thought, eyeing her bitten nails and chapped lips.

  “He's a selfish son of a bitch, a liar, and a con artist,” she went on, sounding gratified. “I can tell.”

  Well, I couldn't argue with any of that. But somehow hearing her say it made me want to, even though those shoes Victor used to choose always had four-inch heels and pinched unbearably.

  “You know, Willetta,” I began, intending to point out that some people balanced their
flaws with competence in other areas: for instance, the ability to eradicate sneaky brain tumors. As far as I could tell, her only balance was between a bad attitude and a lousy disposition.

  But: “I’m not going to let what happened to me happen to my sister,” she declared before I could get the words out.

  Joy's eyes apologized over the red formica of the little table. “Since our dad died, Willetta and I only have each other,” she said by way of explanation. “We do get protective of one another, sometimes.”

  “But I do all the protection,” Willetta muttered resentfully.

  “Your dad was from around here?” I asked. I gazed out at the yard lights again. Ellie nodded, listening.

  “Uh-huh. Pembroke,” Willetta said flatly. “In the woods.”

  Pembroke was the first town after you got off the causeway and onto the mainland.

  “Our father was a Maine guide.” Joy seemed to remember this with pleasure. “Fishing and hunting. We used to spend all our time in the woods with him.”

  Sullen nod from Willetta. Possibly she hadn't been such a big fan of the outdoor life.

  “But when he died,” Joy went on, “we felt we had to go along with his last wish, not stay out there in the sticks.” She looked up at me. “Not because we were girls. Dad taught us everything after Mom died, just as if he'd had sons. We could've stayed. But the woods is a hard place to make a living.”

  “And,” Willetta contributed sourly, “rich men who want Maine guides don't like hiring women to take them on hunting and fishing trips.”

  I could imagine. My old clients would never admit it but half the attraction of such a trip, to them, was pretending to be just like the guy who was taking them on it: emphasis on guy.

  “So first Willetta worked while I went to school,” Joy said, “and then I started…”

  “Come and see the rest of the place,” Willetta interrupted abruptly. “You don't need our boring life history.”

  Although to tell the truth the rest of the place was boring, too, once you got used to cleanliness so intense Victor could have done brain surgery in it. There were two tiny bedrooms, a surprisingly large bath with shelves holding every beauty product ever invented-Joy's hair color, I noted with interest, was called Sunrise Serenade—and another room which Joy apparently used as an office space for the beauty shop, located in the add-on building.