The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  That part got Marj’s attention. “Really?” she asked, forgetting her anger for a moment. “Even though she’s not even, like, around?”

  Rollins explained that it had come from Cornelia’s grandmother and that it had gone directly into her trust account.

  “How much?” Marj asked

  “A few million anyway. Maybe ten.”

  “Whoa.”

  Rollins took a sip of water.

  Marj speculated that perhaps this was just the sort of thing that Cornelia wanted to get away from. “Maybe she was tired of being Cornelia Blanchard, the heiress. Maybe she wanted to be somebody different—move away, start over.”

  It sounded oddly like Rollins’ own fantasy from the other night at the Sloanes’. But then, Marj had done something similar by coming east. Was that the real American dream, to run off and be somebody else?

  “She had no obvious reason to leave,” Rollins insisted. “She’d published two books of poetry. She’d gotten an offer to be a writer in residence at the University of New Hampshire. Her friends all said she seemed happy.”

  “You can never tell,” Marj declared. “How was her sex life? Lesbians aren’t always that active, you know.”

  Rollins felt himself color. Maybe because his own sex life was so limited, he’d been squeamish about investigating this part, even though Bowser had been adamant that he get all the details he could. “Fine, I guess.”

  Marj laughed. “As if you asked about it.”

  “Perhaps you should have handled that part.”

  “Damn straight. I’d have asked the right questions.” She raised her voice, as if she were doing an interrogation: “All right, who’s she been fucking, and for how long?”

  Rollins glanced around, relieved to see that none of his fellow diners had caught this outburst. His cheeks felt unusually warm. “All I picked up was that Cornelia had gotten involved with her gardener.”

  “Elizabeth Payzen, that one?” Marj remembered her from the story as the woman who lived in the converted barn down the road from Cornelia’s place. As Rollins had reported, Elizabeth had been doing some gardening work for Cornelia. Apparently the two had fallen in love.

  “The UPS man saw Elizabeth and Cornelia sunbathing nude down by the pond,” Rollins added offhandedly. “Lots of people mentioned it.”

  “You should have put that in the story.”

  Rollins flushed again. “She’s my cousin, you know. Or was.”

  “Not to mention your old baby-sitter,” Marj shot back. “So what do you think happened to her?”

  Rollins shook his head. “No one knows for sure. The cops figured somebody must have driven by and grabbed her when she was walking down the road. They brought some dogs out there—and that’s where the trail just disappeared.”

  “And no evidence of a struggle.”

  Rollins was impressed with Marj’s memory for the details of the case.

  “No screams, either,” he said. “And there were a fair number of houses around.” This was the part that had always bothered him. He’d checked out the spot. It was by the side of the road, in a patch of mud between a row of hedges and the asphalt, maybe fifty yards from her driveway. Elizabeth lived down that road, and Cornelia had often walked over to see her. There were at least four houses close enough for someone to have heard something. “Whoever it was had to have known her, or she would have resisted.”

  “So who was it?”

  “That’s the big question.”

  “And then her car disappears, too.” That had happened three weeks later. A Volvo sedan.

  “Yeah, strange, isn’t it? It’s like the car picked up and followed her.”

  The waitress came to swap Rollins’ soup bowl for the crab cakes. Rollins dug into his, but Marj just picked at hers.

  “You’re really not hungry?”

  “I had some cookies at my desk. Oh, here.” She slipped a hand into her pocket and handed him his message back. “You said you wanted this.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t want Henderson to find it.”

  “Getting a little paranoid, are we?”

  “I didn’t tell you—that gaunt man did come looking for me last week.”

  Marj’s face went slack. “No.”

  “Yeah, last Wednesday, as close as I can figure. Apparently, he asked about me at the cafe near my place.” Rollins described his encounter with the waitress there, Leeann.

  “So that was him you saw that night,” Marj said.

  “Probably.”

  “They are following you.” Marj said this quietly, to herself as much as to Rollins. She picked up her knife, drummed it on the tabletop, then slammed it down with a loud smack. “Doesn’t this get to you, Rolo? Some strange guy following you places?”

  Rollins nearly told her how he’d been afraid the other morning that his car was wired with explosives, but decided that might be too alarming. “It’s upsetting, sure.”

  “Well, do something about it. I mean, God!”

  “Such as?”

  “You’ve got his license plate number, Rolo. Maybe you can get the guy’s name.” She spoke to him as if he were a child, which was irritating. “Then we’d have something.”

  “And how exactly am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe if you went to the registry of motor vehicles.”

  Rollins was not keen to submit himself to some faceless bureaucracy. “Well, I used to know a private investigator.”

  “You?” Finally, she looked at him with a little respect.

  He explained about meeting Al Schecter when he was doing the story on Cornelia. “We got friendly. I suppose I could call him.”

  Marj’s eyes seem to hang on him a little. “And what about that fax number?”

  “I’ll run that by Schecter, too. Maybe he can trace it.”

  Outside, Marj stepped briskly along the Federal Street sidewalk, and Rollins hurried to keep up. “Look, there’s something you should know about me,” she said as they huffed along. “I don’t hop into bed with just anybody. It’s, like, a policy of mine.”

  Rollins almost lost control of his legs for a moment.

  She turned back to him. “Does that surprise you?”

  “No,” Rollins managed to force out. “I have the exact same policy myself.”

  Marj stopped, causing Rollins to stop, too. “Do you?” she said, searching his face.

  They continued on. It was lovely to walk along with her. Rollins felt that he had somehow entered the aura of warmth and optimism that always seemed to surround her. As they were nearing the Johnson building, Marj stopped one last time and flicked her silky hair back off her collar, her necklace clicking lightly. Rollins’ whole body tingled with the possibility that she might reach for him, say something intimate, memorable. He’d seen women do such things before with men in the last quasi-private moment before returning to the office. But Marj did not touch him. Instead, she asked: “So what’s the E. stand for anyway? In your byline, I mean.”

  Rollins could scarcely remember. It had been years since he’d used his first name.

  “I bet it’s something awful like Egbert,” Marj added.

  This was a bigger secret than she could know. “Actually, it’s Edward.”

  Apparently, he hadn’t said it quite loud enough, for Marj inclined an ear toward him. “Say again?”

  “Edward,” he said firmly. This time, he was loud enough to cause a grimy bicycle messenger who happened to be passing on the street to crane his neck about and gawk. Rollins lowered the volume again. “Edward Arnold Rollins. The first name”—he couldn’t bring himself to repeat it—“comes from a grand-uncle on my mother’s side. The second is my mother’s maiden name.”

  “Edward,” Marj repeated, mulling it over. “Edward Rollins. Eddie Rollins, Teddy Rollins.” She shrugged. “I don’t think that’s so bad.”

  “I just stopped liking it, that’s all,” Rollins said.

  The big, tiled bathroom echoing his name. �
��Edward! Edward!” His mother screaming it, raking the sides of her face with her scarlet fingernails, as if her insides were on fire. His father groaning it into his big hands. And little Stephanie on the tiled floor all cold and wet and silent. Looking, back and forth, from Mother to Father to Mother to Father to Mother. Then their shrinking away as he ran and ran. Out the basement door. Into the cool night. No moon. Creeping through bushes. Watching once more, this time in through a window.

  “Real touchy about the name, aren’t you?” Marj went on. “I can see it all over your face. Names are weird. I never used to like Marj. Kids used to call me ‘Barge’—like a boat, you know? I think it was because I got my boobs early.” She headed across the street, toward the Johnson building. “I told them to go fuck themselves.” She looked back at him. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I don’t think we should be seen going in together.”

  “Oh yeah, okay. Whatever.” Marj kept on across the street. He got a fine view of her from behind, what with the tightness of her black skirt. He particularly liked the rounded gap just above her knees, bounded on either side by what looked like parentheses.

  She paused on the far side of the street and turned back to him. “See ya later, Eddie,” she shouted. Then, as she went down the sidewalk, she raised her left hand over her shoulder and wiggled her fingers good-bye.

  Ten

  Schecter’s card in Rollins’ Rolodex was slightly yellowed. It had his number in Hingham, down on the South Shore, in the tight three-bedroom that he’d worked out of. But when Rollins called, he got three chimelike beeps and an automated message that said the line had been disconnected. He checked with information, but there was no listing for him in the town, or anywhere else in the region. Ditto for all of 617 in greater Boston, and the new area codes to the west, 508, 781, and 978. Rollins tried the Boston office of the Hartford Indemnity Company, which had hired the detective for the Blanchard investigation. After bouncing around several departments, he finally reached an agent who had worked with him on the case. “Oh yeah, Al Schecter,” the agent said. “Last time we talked, he said he was getting out of investigations. Sounded real blown out.”

  “He say where he was going?”

  “No, but he always used to talk about moving to Rockport, Maine. That was like a thing of his.”

  “And do what?”

  “Start a little fishing concern up there, if you can believe it.” The man gave out a sly cackle. “Now, I don’t know if he ever did it or not. Lot of ’em say that from time to time.”

  Rollins thanked the man for the information. He found it hard to picture Al Schecter out in a boat of any kind, but he dialed Rockport information anyway and found a residential listing. No one answered when Rollins called, but a woman’s voice came on the machine. That threw him, since the voice sounded too old to be one of Schecter’s daughters (he had two, who must be teenagers by now), but too young to be his wife, Pat. Rollins left no message, but made a note of the number and resolved to try again that evening.

  He had just hung up the phone when an interoffice e-mail came in.

  U traced that licnse plte yet??????

  m

  Rollins was too pleased to be irritated at this indiscretion. He quickly responded:

  Still working on it. Seems Schecter has moved to Maine. Please, though: no more e-mails.

  Marj replied a few minutes later:

  OOOOps. Sorry. Aerobics tonite. Call latr?

  Rollins wasn’t sure if that meant he should call, or if she would. Either way, he was proud of himself for not even thinking of driving by her apartment building to try to catch a glimpse of her in her leotard. But he still felt charged up after work, and, for the hell of it, he decided to pursue the first car he saw with either a 3 or an F in the license plate, in honor of Marj’s apartment number. The eighty-six hours were finally up, and a pursuit always helped to blow off steam.

  The first car matching his search criteria proved to be an orange Volkswagen Cabrio convertible, license plate number 603-TLB, hurrying past the Faneuil Hall marketplace, aswarm with tourists as always. He had to do a quick U-turn by the back side of City Hall to catch up with the car. This time, it was stuck in the left-turn lane at the next lights. The convertible’s top was down, and the driver was plainly visible from all sides: a man in his early twenties with shoulder-length hair and oily-looking skin. “Musician type,” was the way Rollins described him in the brief audio note he recorded on the Panasonic, along with the time, 6:12 P.M.

  As he waited at the light, Rollins’ attention wandered to the light blue Dodge Colt one lane over, where a young blonde was peering into her rearview mirror as she touched up her lipstick. But Rollins had a rule never to break off a pursuit that conformed to the day’s internal code, and he dutifully kept after the Cabrio. He kept to himself his complaints about the longhair’s stop-and-go driving. But he did note the likely age, twenty-seven or -eight, and then felt a pang to realize that this was probably the sort of person Marj dated.

  Rollins followed the Cabrio intently as it wove through the clogged Boston streets up and up and onto the expressway, a complete misnomer at this hour, and then veered north over the Charles and angled left onto Interstate 93. He had an almost pulsating sense of déjà vu: this was, of course, the route to North Reading. Was he being lured back to the dark house by this longhaired stranger? Was this hippie somehow associated with Sloane and/or the gaunt man? “I’m heading north again on 93, just like the other night with the Audi,” Rollins told the tape recorder. “Didn’t think I’d be coming this way again so soon.”

  The traffic thinned just over the bridge, and “Mick Jagger”—as Rollins dubbed him, after the only living rock star he could visualize—shifted into the fast lane and gunned it, his stringy hair flapping behind him. Rollins struggled to keep up, one lane over and several cars back. As far as Rollins could tell, the driver didn’t take any particular notice of him—or any of his surroundings. He didn’t seem to be checking his side or rearview mirrors unduly, or sending out sidelong glances. Rollins was too far back to hear anything, but he sensed the Cabrio had loud music playing—probably the type that Marj listened to—for he could sometimes see the driver bob his head in time to a fast rhythm. The Cabrio continued on for miles; to pass the time, Rollins mentally ticked off the socioeconomic implications of the exit signs that flew past. He tensed up as the Cabrio finally drew close to the North Reading exit. Rollins remembered the Audi signaling for the turn. But the Cabrio kept cruising along in the passing lane, Mick Jagger bobbing as before. “Six twenty-three,” Rollins noted with relief. “Cabrio has passed North Reading. Still headed north. No connection to the Elmhurst house, looks like.” He clicked off the recorder. “Thank God.”

  The Cabrio sailed on toward New Hampshire, past countless signs advertising food stops that brought hunger pangs from Rollins, who normally had a snack after work. He soldiered on, turning his attention from the Cabrio only long enough to make an occasional audio note about time and location. About twenty miles past the New Hampshire border, the Cabrio slid across to the right lane without signaling, then zipped onto the off-ramp for 102. It was the Londonderry exit, and Rollins’ neck tightened as he turned to follow. “What do you know?” he told the machine. “Londonderry.” Rollins had been back to Cornelia’s old haunts many times since her disappearance, but never on a pursuit.

  To avoid drawing attention to himself by flaring his brake lights, Rollins downshifted instead of hitting the brakes—another trick he’d learned from Schecter—to slow himself. But he still had to pull hard on the wheel to avoid the guardrail as he swerved onto the off-ramp.

  Safely on 102, Rollins had the eerie feeling that his rock star might lead him back to Cornelia’s down Pelbourne Road, west off 93. But instead the Cabrio kept right and bombed straight through Derry and then turned in to a Getty station just before the old Wellington shopping center, where a new Kmart had gone in, on the far side of town. Rollins pulled up across the s
treet, grateful for a rest. He rolled down the window and adjusted the side-view mirror to observe his man in its reflection.

  The Mick stepped out while the attendant gassed up his car. Rollins noted the tight cut-offs that revealed a lot of hairy upper thigh and the T-shirt that advertised one of the many overpriced microbrews Rollins avoided. Was this really Marj’s type? The longhair strolled to the station’s pay phone where Rollins swung his head around to watch him talk animatedly, all the while cocking his hips from side to side. “I bet our rock star is speaking to a girlfriend of his,” Rollins whispered into the Panasonic, violating his self-imposed ordinance against speculation. “He seems pretty happy.” Finally, the Mick pressed his finger down on the telephone’s disconnect button and kissed the receiver before hanging it back up. Rollins noted that fact on the machine and added: “Must be love.”

  He returned to his car, but drove it only a few feet to park it by the air pump and draw up the top; he got out and leaned against the side of the car to soak up the last of the sun’s rays. In moments, a pink Chevy swooped in. The female driver had long, flowing hair and sunglasses. “Hey, get your butt over here,” she yelled to the rock star, but he’d already started running. He hopped into her car, brought both his arms around her and gave her a big, tongue-mingling kiss. The two of them drove off together, leaving the Cabrio behind. Rollins had watched all this without a sound. As soon as they headed out of the station, he recorded everything he’d seen while it was still fresh in his mind.

  Technically, Rollins was now released from his obligations. He had followed the Cabrio to its destination here on 102. But it was early. Marj would still be at aerobics, so there would be no point in hurrying back just yet. As a matter of personal curiosity, he revved up the Nissan and pursued the two lovebirds about ten miles, just shy of 95, where they pulled in at the Overnighter Motel. It was a tawdry-looking place with a big neon sign, a tiny pool out front, and weeds growing up through the cracks in the asphalt parking lot. Rollins turned in to a photocopy shop across the street, parked in the deepening shadows by the building, and, after digging out Marj’s binoculars from the glove compartment, squeezed through to the backseat to hunker down and watch through the rear window. From there, even without the lenses, he could see the Mick kiss the blonde on her lips, cheeks, and forehead, and he saw his man slip a hand under the waistband of her jeans after they finally stepped out of her car. She let him leave it there as they crossed the lot toward the long row of motel rooms. She led him to room number 29, five from the end, and wriggled a key out of her pocket. She unlocked the door, and then the rock star swept her up into his arms and carried her inside. She kicked her legs in the air as she passed over the threshold.