by Sarah Graves
Which was why I felt no qualms at all about putting clear satin polyurethane finish on that hall floor instead of replacing the antique brown varnish with which it had been covered.
“You don’t think it’s a contradiction?” Ellie was eyeing the polyurethane cans doubtfully.
I shook my head firmly while readying the equipment for the next part of the floor job: her husband, George, plus an electric floor sander so heavy and powerful that if you didn’t keep it moving while it was running, it would grind all the way to China.
“Nope.” I’d had this argument with myself, and won it. “The poly’s what they’d’ve used if they had it. More durable, better-looking, and modern. People were mad for modern in 1823.”
“Especially,” George agreed, clamping fresh sandpaper into the sanding machine, “plumbing. This house would’ve had a hot tub with hydromassage if they could’ve rigged one.”
Which was probably true and a hot tub would’ve been fun. But George also wanted to replace all the plaster in the house with wallboard and the wavery-glassed old windows with thermopane, so I had to be careful about encouraging him on this topic.
Instead I sorted through my pile of tack cloths, wide sheets of cheesecloth impregnated with sticky stuff the consistency of softened beeswax, to make sure I had enough fresh ones. Because while George had the heavy work, which was sanding the floor—
—the sander outweighed me massively, which put my using it into the pulling-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps department—
—there remained the little matter of cleanup. I’d hung plastic sheets in the doorways and draped tarps, but the dust George raised would need elimination with tack cloth before I could apply the poly.
“Ready,” George announced, and we left him to it, closing the door behind us as the sander went on with a roar, sounding as if it were not just scouring the old floor, but devouring it.
“Whoa,” Sam said, looking up from his apple cake as the huge sound erupted. “What’s he doing in there, feeding the banisters through a wood chipper?”
Across from him sat Mr. Ash. Between them were yellow notebook pages scrawled with diagrams and mathematical equations. “Mr. Ash is helping with the theory problems for the seminar this weekend,” Sam explained.
It was late afternoon — or as Sam would’ve put it, past 1600 hours — and the mason had finished his work down in the cellar for today.
“See,” Sam added, “you don’t just blow stuff up any old way, underwater. First you have to know where the force vectors’ll go, what’s going to impact what.”
Personally I feel “impact” as a verb has a negative impact on the English language, but never mind: if Lian Ash could keep force vectors from impacting my son, I was all for it.
Just then Victor came in, as usual omitting to knock; Victor treats my house the way swallows treat Capistrano.
“Came to check on Sam,” he explained, although he hadn’t. He’d been passing, heard commotion, and decided to investigate in case there was anything going on that he could criticize.
“Little late for a demolition project, isn’t it?” he said, helping himself to a slab of apple cake. Without being asked he added some ice cream, poured coffee, and sat down.
Mr. Ash slid papers aside, eyeing Victor as intently as if storing his features for a high-tech face-recognition program.
“If you do it at the end of the day, the dust settles by morning,” I said, “so you can—”
The sander went off, leaving a hole in the air where the noise had been. “…wipe it up,” I finished defensively, then caught myself. What did I care what Victor thought of my schedule?
On the other hand if you need somebody to poke holes in your theories, my ex is your perfect stiletto. Ellie started another pot of coffee while I tried mine on Victor: theories, I mean, on who was committing bloody murder.
“It wasn’t bloody,” he objected, spooning up ice cream.
“It’s a figure of speech. Just listen for once, will you? We feel it’s unlikely, but it could be Roy McCall, to get publicity for his video. Because it’s got a scary theme, so scary things will be newsworthy.”
“Assuming they don’t halt the project,” Victor said.
“Or,” I agreed, “that could’ve been the whole point. Maybe someone who was angry with Roy wanted to end the work altogether and make Roy’s career go,” I glanced at Sam and Mr. Ash, “boom.”
Wade came downstairs just then to wash the gun oil off his hands and join what was becoming a kitchen party; a few hours in the company of weapons always cheers him up, and he grabbed some coffee and cake like the others and put his oar in:
“Guys at the dock say Wilma’d kill you in a heartbeat, she didn’t like you, thought she could get away with it,” he commented. “Wilma’s gonna be another Ma Barker, someday, have her own gang.”
“Wyatt Evert’s still in the picture too, and we’re going to talk to Fran Hanson about him,” I put in. “And of course there’s still Harry’s idea: that some unknown person is really after him.”
“If that’s so,” Mr. Ash spoke up pensively, “strikes me somebody’s slowin’ down in his old age.”
Victor frowned. He disapproved of a hired laborer sitting at the table at all, much less joining the conversation.
“Because,” Mr. Ash went on, “if you go by what Markle says, this villain of his used to get everyone he tried for. All those people back in the city, you didn’t hear of any of ’em getting away, did you?”
He sipped some coffee. “But now if this same mystery man of Markle’s is behind it all, guy’s only managing about fifty percent of his targets.”
“I’ll be damned,” Wade said slowly. “He’s right. I wondered why it was such a damn-fool botch job.”
His “accident,” he meant. And Sam’s. “If you really want to hurt someone,” Wade went on, “you don’t mess with brakes or even rig up shotgun shells to explode.”
“Or fool with any boots,” George contributed, joining us. “You get yourself a high-powered rifle, and—”
But he didn’t get to finish that thought because just then Cat Dancing leapt onto the table, spotted Victor, and put a paw firmly into his ice cream so she could shove her head purringly into his face.
Instantly Victor recoiled in fastidious horror, rushing to the sink. Mr. Ash watched with interest as Victor began sudsing his face with hot water and dish soap.
“Clean sort o’ specimen, ain’t you?” he said.
Groping for a towel, Victor scowled in reply. He felt that people who got covered in dust were inferior to ones who got bone chips spattered over themselves in their own daily work.
“Pthaw,” he said feelingly. Then, his face brightening: “Say, Jacobia, what’s for dinner?”
So that one way and another, we never did get back to the topic of murder. But later that night when everyone had finally gone home, I took Monday out for a walk.
The night air was thick as a damp cloak, the streetlights white with unnatural brilliance in the growing humidity. The storm was teasing us, wreaking havoc off Cape Cod. A few lamps still glowed behind drawn shades in the upstairs windows of the old houses. The first tentative trillings of frogs in distant ponds carried clearly in the silence.
The dog and I wandered past the old Shead mansion. Its windows were broken and its roof crumbled tragically, its eaves pigeon-infested. Monday’s ears pricked at a sound from the shadowy yard, but it was only a skunk trundling fearlessly to cross our path.
Harry’s lights were on. “Hi,” he said when we’d mounted the shaky porch and knocked on the door. Prill appeared behind him in the hall, stubby tail wagging. “Come in.” Harry led us into the dining room. “Has something happened?”
Over the mantel he’d hung a big corkboard: on it was tacked an Eastport map and a time line of the accidents and deaths. Colored pushpins showed the locations; the details of each event were noted on stickers, along with where each of us had been at the pertinent times.
/> “No,” I answered. “Nothing’s happened. We were out for our walk and I saw your lights on, that’s all. This is impressive.” I waved at the wall chart, crisply drawn and well organized. Looking at it, you expected your answers to jump right out of it. “Made any new connections?”
But Harry’s face told me no answers had appeared. Instead he had something else to say, something I hadn’t expected.
“Got a call from my old job this afternoon. Records guy at the NYPD. Seems our buddy Bob Arnold asked them to check my prints against a sample he’d sent them.”
“Can they do that?” That cup Bob had taken; I’d forgotten about it.
Harry nodded, trying to seem matter-of-fact about it. “Sure. In case somebody makes an evidence-handling screwup, gloms a fat thumbprint onto something at a crime scene, lab’ll know whose it is. You know the drill.”
I didn’t. But Bob did. “And?”
“And I was just wondering if that was his idea,” Harry replied meaningfully. “Or if maybe it was yours.”
“No. Not my idea. I didn’t think of it. But I’d have suggested it, if I had. No offense, Harry, but this…”
I waved at the chart whose clarity was nothing like the chaos of what I was thinking. Or feeling. “It’s all just so worrisome, is all. I’m sorry if that bothers you…”
“No,” he cut in. “No, it’s a good idea. I told the records guy, go ahead and tell Bob anything he asks. I’ll ask them to call you, too, if you want.” He laughed uncomfortably. “It feels weird to be on the other side of things, is all. I just wanted to clear the air.”
“Yeah. Clearing the air is good.” I kept my eyes on the chart but it told me nothing I hadn’t already known.
“You from the city originally?” I asked. “Have family there?”
“Yeah. Brooklyn. But no family anymore. My parents died in a robbery when I was twelve.”
He said it matter-of-factly. “Guy was never caught,” he went on, “and I got raised in foster homes. I guess that’s what got me wanting to catch bad guys, myself.”
He opened a drawer in the table beside his makeshift bed, drew out a small black box, like a jeweler’s box. He opened it.
“Here it is. All I’ve got left, now, of catching bad guys.”
It was an NYPD gold shield. “Didn’t wear this, of course. You put it in a safe-deposit box, or you hide it somewhere good if you keep it at your place. You wear a duplicate for everyday work, take this baby out on special occasions,” he said.
“I can see why.” The shield was more impressive than anything from Tiffany’s, as much for what it meant as for its monetary value. Seeing it, I thought of richly garbed ceremonial warriors.
“Yeah, that was me. Badge 1905. Not anymore, though.” He put it away again, slid the drawer shut.
“Harry. What do you think got it all started? I mean, if you’re right and it began back in the city, all this…” I waved at his chart. “Whatever it is.”
He shrugged. “Somebody was mad. Angry at cops. Angry with me for some reason, too. Very,” he emphasized quietly, “angry.”
“Yeah.” I looked around at the clean, well-lighted place Harry had made for himself. “It must be harder,” I ventured, “to lose your parents at that age. I mean, to know what you’ve lost. Mine were gone before I knew them, which made it easy in a way.”
“No. Not easy. Just different. We all deal with it in different ways. But only people who’ve been through it can really understand, I think.”
A silence, as we both did understand. Harry was right; the absence of my parents wasn’t something I thought about much, but it was like a missing layer of sky: the cold stars at night were just that much nearer.
Too near. “I’ll be glad to get my own things in here,” he said. “Own furniture, books. I’ve had a lot sent up from my last place, put it at the U-Stor-It on the mainland.”
“Yes,” I said inadequately, “that’ll make it more like home. I mean…”
“Yeah,” he said, covering my gaffe; we both knew his last real home had been a horror show, at the end.
We made a little small talk. He’d gone to Calais and bought dress shirts, still stacked in clear plastic wrappers on his bed. He meant to fly to Pittsburgh for Samantha’s memorial service.
“Funeral’s private, but I can still pay my respects at the other thing. Hope one of the shirts fits. I got them at Wal-Mart. Been a while since I bought one. I wonder if they still have the little celluloid strips in the collars?”
“Wade buys shirts at Wal-Mart. I don’t know about the strips but they run pretty true to size. Did you get those there, too?”
I indicated the boots he was wearing; nice, new ones, as I’d first noticed on the day we met. That seemed a long time ago now.
“What?” He looked perplexed for a moment. “Oh. No. Bought ’em at the L.L. Bean store on my way here, in Ellsworth.”
And more in this trivial vein until he walked me to the door. After a rendevous with Monday, Prill had stationed herself as usual at his side. “Harry,” I began, looking out into the chilly darkness of a spring night in Eastport.
I knew why I’d come here. I just hadn’t let myself admit it until now. “Harry, was he alive, do you think? I mean, what do you think about it, when you look back on it?”
He understood. “No. I hate to say it but I think we were wasting our time. They were hot for him, you know? A big piece of a radical network.” He sighed. “Jake, your dad would’ve been a real feather in someone’s cap. But after all we did, all the tiny little leads we went chasing, we never had a whiff of anything that told me he was really out there. So I think it was good for my career, but that was all.” He sighed again. “Not,” he added, “that it made a big difference, in the end. Anything else you want to know?”
“Yeah.” This was hard to say. “When you found me. Was there any sign that anybody had tried to protect me? Put me somewhere that I wouldn’t get too hurt, or…”
Or what? A little crash helmet and a flame-resistant suit? Nothing less could have helped except dumb luck, which I’d had.
And I’d had Harry. “No. You were wearing pajamas. Everything covered with soot. All I saw at first were two big eyes looking out from under a piece of sheet metal.”
Across the bay, the lights of Campobello twinkled innocently against a backdrop of velvet black. Things always looked innocent when viewed from a distance, I guessed.
“No,” Harry repeated. “I’m sorry. But you’d had, as far as I could tell, no protection from anyone.”
The next morning was a pastel wash of cool, pale tints and salt-tinctured sea air. A little white scallop-dragger tootled serenely on the blue water; gulls dipped and wheeled above it. A harbor seal’s head surfaced, trailing a v-shaped wake.
Still no real sign of a storm but it was out there getting itself ready. “Wilma’s nephew could’ve gotten into the house and walled Harriet’s body up, too,” I said, “not just rigged the wire. I saw fresh mortar but of course I didn’t make anything of it then.”
Ellie and I strode down Water Street past La Sardina. A whiff of chili spice hung in the damp air outside the restaurant, replaced by the smell of fresh doughnuts as we passed the bakery.
“The Danvers family won’t be here for weeks, yet,” I added. “A work truck or a van parked outside their house for a little while—”
Long enough, say, to lug in Harriet’s body, perhaps rolled in a tarp of the kind workmen everywhere are always hauling—
“ — wouldn’t even have been noticed.”
“They had been having a lot of work done before they got back from Florida,” Ellie concurred. “Lots of painting and all. Probably the rent from Top Cat was helping to pay for it.”
It was a strategy I approved, the more so since my check of the hall floor showed more dust than I — or anyone — could have bargained for, punctuated by cat footprints that had carried it efficiently all over the house. As far as I was concerned at the moment, the only good state
to be in during home repair was the state of elsewhere, and if you could get someone else to pay for it, too, so much the better.
“Look,” Ellie said, angling her head at the bakery window. Ahead of us, Monday pranced jauntily, pausing to nibble street-treats; old bubble gum was her favorite.
Fran Hanson stood at the bakery counter. Monday yanked the leash, scrambling at a crumb of dropped pastry. Inside, Wyatt Evert’s assistant looked up at the sudden movement, caught my eye, and looked down again.
“Not feeling sociable,” I observed as Ellie and I went on past the Eastport Art Gallery, the dime store, and Quoddy Crafts. Now that I knew Fran was in town again I was in no big hurry to quiz her; Wilma was my quarry this morning.
A few minutes later we climbed into the warren of streets lining the hillside below the Fort Sullivan ruins. Days after the British invaded it in 1814, Eastporters were billeting redcoats and signing loyalty oaths to King George, their fingers crossed behind their backs. Now, perhaps in memory of that humiliation, the fort was a nothingish pile of stones, unmarked.
“There.” Ellie pointed past scrubby softwood trees whose new green leaves obscured a clear vantage point over the harbor. “That’s Wilma’s house.”
“Ye gods.” Tucked back into the brush and junky trees loomed a ramshackle dwelling with a shiny tin roof, brown asphalt siding punctuated irregularly by tar paper, a porch roof propped on two-by-fours perched on rusty paint cans, and a connecting maze of sheds in different stages of collapse that jutted at every angle.
Also, the house was positively bouncing to the bass-thump of music booming within, and so full of people that they seemed to be falling out of the windows.
“You insisted,” Ellie reminded me sweetly, “that you wanted to visit Wilma, first.”
“But…”
Undeterred, she led me up the steps toward what I had imagined might be an unpleasant but survivable sit-down with the formidable aforementioned. Now, however, it felt like imminent doom, as more small Bounces appeared.
