by Jane Langton
“No, no, I didn’t, I didn’t.” Annie was overwhelmed by a nightmare sense of unfairness. Her grief for Eddy turned to anger. She clenched her fists. “It was your fault. You didn’t care what happened to Eddy, you and Roberta, you didn’t care at all.”
“Who else has keys to this place?” said the detective loudly, trying to restore order.
“He has a key,” said Annie, pointing a trembling finger at Bob Gast. “I gave you a key, remember? That weekend I went away? I gave Roberta a key.”
“We gave it back,” shouted Gast.
So they had. It was the key with a tag, “Annie’s house,” lying in a tangle of other keys in a kitchen drawer, along with the pliers and the hammer. “My aunt, Mary Kelly, she has one.”
“Homer Kelly’s wife?” said the police sergeant. “She’s your aunt? Anybody else?”
Annie tried to think. Her mind was a blank. She shook her head.
“Nobody else has a key to this house, just you and your aunt?”
“That’s right.”
They all turned their heads. There was a noise, the small rattle of a key in a lock, the sound of the front door opening and closing. Flimnap walked in from the hall.
“Oh, of course,” said Annie lamely. “I forgot.”
Chapter 32
“Have you not seen Death go by, with my little child?”
Hans Christian Andersen, “The Story of a Mother”
They were finished with Annie, they were finished with the wreckage in her house. A couple of medical technicians carried Eddy’s body outside on a stretcher. Bob Gast, his face streaked with tears, followed them out the front door. Roberta brought up the rear, weeping, holding Charlene by the hand. Charlene’s eyes were dry.
Only the three police officers remained, tall dignified men in blue uniforms with leather holsters attached to their belts, and keys that jingled when they moved. With the departure of the Gasts, they gathered around Flimnap. They were dissatisfied with his refusal to explain where he had been. “Okay, Mr. O’Dougherty, it’s a simple question. We just want to know where you went, and what for?”
“I had things to do,” Flimnap said softly, and in response to their exclamations of ridicule he said nothing more. He stood stubbornly silent, facing three representatives of the state, highly trained and responsible men who were trying to bring order out of the muddle created by erring humankind. His expression was vacant. He looked sidelong, as if concentrating on quiet words spoken in another room.
Annie watched with mounting anxiety. Say something, Flimnap, say anything. Why don’t you lie?
But Flimnap said nothing.
Frustrated, the four officers moved aside to mutter among themselves, glancing over their shoulders at Flimnap. He was obviously a nutcase, but why the hell would he come back right now, with a police cruiser in the driveway, if the kid’s death was his doing? Before long they gave up and left, shaking their heads and promising to come back.
At once Flimnap looked at Annie. “Call your Uncle Homer.”
“Oh, yes,” said Annie, and she plucked the phone off the kitchen wall. Eddy’s picture of the White Rabbit was taped to the wall beside it, and for a moment she couldn’t see. Then the sound of Mary Kelly’s comfortable family voice produced a flood of tears. It was a minute before Annie could explain, and ask for Homer.
“I’ll get him. Oh, Annie, my God.”
Homer started for Annie’s house at once. He wasn’t surprised at what had happened, because Mary’s niece was always getting into some kind of terrible trouble. But now his affection for the girl rose up and hit him hard. Poor old Annie!
As he headed down Route 2, he saw the police ambulance coming toward him, and he swore under his breath. He was too late. He had missed getting a look at the poor kid lying exactly where he had fallen. It was too bad. Homer had a theory that the first glance at a scene of trouble could tell you everything, if you could only register it on your brain and sort it out.
With Mary’s key he unlocked Annie’s door and walked into her big living room. It was empty. The scaffolding still lay in a clutter of fallen boards on the floor. Homer glanced up at the storytellers on Annie’s wall. There were a lot more of them than he remembered. They stood in clusters, serenely disregarding the wreckage below. Their arcaded gallery was like a splendid extension of the room, an opening into another world, in which the death of one small boy was an insignificant event. Homer tore his eyes away. Where was Annie? Where was Whoseywhatsis, Flimnap?
He crossed the hall and lifted his hand to knock on Annie’s bedroom door, but she opened it at once and clutched him. “Oh, Uncle Homer.”
Homer had known Annie ever since she was an excitable little girl skipping rope on the grass in front of the old farmhouse on Barrett’s Mill Road. It just happened to be the house in which a tall young woman named Mary Morgan was living with her sister and brother-in-law. Now Homer held Annie close and murmured in her ear, “It’s okay, honey. Tell me what the hell happened.”
“The door was locked,” sobbed Annie. “They were both locked. I swear they were locked.”
“Okay, Annie, it’s all right.” He pushed her gently down on the bed and pulled up a chair. “Tell me.”
“He’s going to sue me. And his wife is a litigation lawyer. She works for Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket. They’ll sue me for everything I’ve got, that’s what he said.”
“Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket! Christ almighty, they’re the sleaziest dirtballs in Boston. I’ve had a few grim encounters with them myself. Homer shook his head in melancholy wonder. “Look here, tell me about Eddy. Tell me everything you can remember about that poor little kid.”
Annie began haltingly, then caught her breath and hurried on. She began with Eddy’s delight in the stories she had been painting on her wall. “He loved to come here and hear about Little Red Riding Hood and, you know, the Emperor’s nightingale and all the rest, and look at the wall.” Whassat, Anniei? Whassat?
Homer had a sinking feeling. “He liked your wall?”
“Oh, yes. I doubt his parents ever read to him. He was hungry for stories. And, listen, Homer, I’m convinced they were trying to kill him. You know, without actually using a gun or anything.” Annie told Homer about Eddy’s horrifying ride down the hill in one of the Gasts’ cars. “Actually, it was an extra car, an old wreck of a car, not one they used very much.” Only when they wanted to make a certain kind of impression on their future landlady, thought Annie bitterly. “They wouldn’t have wanted to destroy one of their good cars. So they encouraged Eddy to play in this old car. I’ll bet they released the brake themselves.”
“You don’t know that for certain. Where’s the car now?”
“I don’t know.”
Homer looked at Annie sadly. “You said Eddy liked your wall?”
“Oh, yes. He wanted to know about everything, the hare and the tortoise, Wilbur the pig, Peter Rabbit. He wanted me to tell him all the stories.” Annie looked at Homer with tears in her eyes. “That was when it all began. Listen, Homer, this is the plain truth. That little kid, you’ve seen what he could do.” She pointed at the wall beside her bed where she had hung some of Eddy’s paintings, newly matted and framed. “I gave him good paints and good paper, and look at the marvelous things he did with them. His death is such a waste. Oh, God, Homer, do you think it was my fault?”
Grimly Homer took her hand and squeezed it. “Carry on. Tell me more.”
“He began to come here. Almost every day he’d show up at the door. If it was locked, he’d knock. If it wasn’t, he’d just walk in. Once he came in the middle of the night.”
“Did he ever come when you weren’t here?”
“Yes, once or twice. Once I came home and found him up on the scaffolding, like—like today.” Annie got up and reached for her box of tissues and mopped at her face. “That was when I began locking the doors whenever I went out. Oh, I always lock the front door, but at first I didn’t bother with the other one. Then, afte
r Eddy got in that day, I began locking that too.”
“What about Flimnap? Did he have a key? Was he here sometimes when you were out?”
“Yes, he had a key, and of course he was often here when I was out. You’ll have to ask him about Eddy.”
Homer stared at Eddy’s glowing pictures and said slowly, “He was fascinated by what you were doing? You were enriching his life, discovering the artist in him?”
“Yes, that’s right, that’s right! He was thirsty for it. And I helped him. I was glad and grateful to help him, he was so gifted.”
Homer’s melancholy deepened. “Annie, you’re making it worse, don’t you see? The more he wanted to come here, the more you look like an attractive nuisance. They’ll say you enticed him here to his peril.”
“That’s what Bob Gast said just now. But I didn’t, I didn’t. Oh, God, perhaps I did, only it wasn’t to his peril, it was just the opposite.”
It was worse and worse. Homer shook his head. There was no comfort to be had. “Look here, you’re going to need a good defense attorney. If they really do sue you, I’ll try to persuade Jerry Neville to take your case. He’s given up active practice to write a book, but he’s the best trial lawyer in Middlesex County. Or the entire country, or maybe the world.”
Chapter 33
… at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.
Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid”
“Bob?”
There was a pause, and then Bob Gast said, “Here.”
“Hey, are you okay? You sound kind of strange.”
“I’m okay.” Gast pulled himself together. “What is it?”
“Pearl’s signature, I’ve got it. She signed the release.”
“She signed? Well, fine. Send it to me, okay?”
“Well, sure, only I’ve got to make copies. It may be a few days.”
“You’re sure she signed? No kidding?”
“Oh, sure, she signed.” Fred Small stared at the practice sheet in front of him, on which he had at last perfected the swift upright signature of his murdered wife. “I’ve got it right here in front of me.”
In the woods in Northtown, Flimnap knew a trail leading back into the thickest growth of trees, where tall white pines grew out of a cellarhole. No other trace of the original house remained. Had the farmer abandoned it to pan for gold in California? There were still a couple of spindly lilac bushes beside the hole.
On his second day in the woods Flimnap ventured out for a Boston Globe, and found a mention of Eddy’s death on page 43. The story included a picture of the Gast family in happier days—a grinning Bob, a smiling Roberta, a beaming Charlene, and a solemn Eddy. Annie’s painted wall was mentioned, and so was the rolling scaffolding, but there was no picture of Annie and no accusation of carelessness on her part. There was nothing in the article about keys, nothing about a handyman called Flimnap O’Dougherty.
Flimnap stayed in the Northtown woods through fourteen Boston Globes, just to be on the safe side. He spent his time exploring the remoter parts of the wilderness, identifying shrubs and trees and looking for wildflowers. One day, in a sheltered corner under a rocky cliff, far from the place where he had parked his truck, he found something unexpected. He stopped short and heaved aside a pile of dead branches. Then, grimly, he went back to his truck for a shovel.
The long creamy envelope appeared in Annie’s mail precisely one week after the death of Eddy Gast. The return address was menacing—“Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, Attorneys at Law, 7 Federal Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.”
She read the terrible paragraph within the envelope, dropped the letter on the floor, and snatched up the phone. “Two million, Uncle Homer. They’re suing me for two million dollars.”
“Two million!” There was a horrified pause, and then Homer said angrily, “Isn’t it interesting the way some people maximize their good fortune? Not only did the Gasts get rid of their embarrassing little son, they mean to get rich at the same time.”
“But that’s what’s so awful, Uncle Homer. They were the ones who were careless. It was almost as if they wanted him to get lost, or—listen, did I tell you what happened on Route 2?” Annie described the near-accident on the highway, when Eddy had almost been run over. Then her voice faltered. “He was coming after me, I’m afraid. I told him I was going to Cambridge, so he walked all the way through the woods to Route 2. He was trying to follow me to Cambridge. But, Uncle Homer, it wasn’t my fault. It was because they didn’t watch over him. They didn’t care what happened to Eddy.”
Homer’s heart dropped into his shoes. It was worse than ever. The boy had obviously been fixated on Annie. “Look,” he said, “I’ll call Jerry Neville right away.”
“Listen, Uncle Homer, I’ve got insurance. I’ve got a big personal-injury policy. Won’t that cover it?”
Homer’s dejection deepened. “Don’t pin your hopes on it, honey child.”
Jerry Neville did not lighten Homer’s gloom. He listened politely to Homer’s account of Annie’s troubles, then made a noise of harsh discouragement. “Impossible case. She can’t win. And those sharks, Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, they’ll gouge and gouge, and leave her with nothing. And I mean nothing.”
“Oh, Lord. Poor Annie.”
“Her only hope is to settle out of court. Tell you what, Homer, I’ll do my best. Maybe we can save something.”
“Oh, God, Jerry, thank you. In the meantime I’ll see if I can find out anything that might help. Annie swears she locked her doors, to keep the kid from getting in. She’s absolutely sure.”
“Well, fine. Do what you can.”
“Listen, Jerry, Annie’s got insurance, Paul Revere personal-injury insurance. Won’t they pay up?”
Neville uttered a cynical snort. “If she hires an expensive lawyer and sues the company, maybe they’d pay a few thousand.”
Chapter 34
Oh! John, John, John, the grey goose is gone,
And the fox is off to his den O!
Mother Goose rhyme
Next morning, when the phone rang, Annie had another shock. It was her old boyfriend Burgess the stockbroker, the whiz kid, the boy wonder. “Listen, Annie,” said Burgess, “don’t worry about a thing.”
“Worry? Why should I worry?”
“Oh, I thought you might be following the Dow Jones.”
“The Dow Jones! You mean it’s gone down? That computer stock you said I should buy? It’s gone down?”
“Way down. Way, way down. But it’s bottomed out, Annie. I’ve got inside information. Hang in there. You’ll soon be sitting pretty, I swear.”
“Oh, Burgess, my God.”
“Trust me.”
It was springtime around Annie’s house. But the season was rushing by too fast. Why didn’t it show a little thrift? Why didn’t it save some of its blossoms and bring them on one kind at a time? No, it was behaving as if there were no tomorrow, spending all its flowers at once—magnolias and forsythia, daffodils and bleeding heart, lily of the valley and the sweet-smelling daphne she had transplanted beside her front door.
Trying to cheer herself up, Annie wandered down the hill into the wilderness at the bottom of the lawn. From the house she had seen white clouds of shadblow flowering among the weedy oak saplings and sprawling honeysuckle. Struggling among the briars, she lifted a blossoming twig to her nose. There was no fragrance, only the freshness of a thousand expanding leaves.
It didn’t help. She was still too sickened by Eddy’s death and too fearful about her own financial peril. What if her invested capital disappeared altogether? And what if she lost the suit and had to pay Bob and Roberta Gast all that money? She would lose the house and the hillside and the vegetable garden and the thorny wilderness and every tree and bush and flower. And her wall! She would lose her painted wall.
Annie went back up the hill, picked up the phone, found the number for the central offices of the P
aul Revere Mutual Insurance Company, and worked her way through the electronic labyrinth in search of Jack.
When she found him at last he was delighted to talk to her. “Oh, hi there, Annie. What’s the matter, you want to upgrade your policy? Listen, I thought at the time you ought to add a little something to cover all that valuable furniture.”
“No, no, Jack, it’s not that. Oh, Jack, I’m in awful trouble.” Quickly Annie explained what had happened to young Eddy Gast in her new house. “They think it’s my fault. They think I left the door open so Eddy could come in when I wasn’t there. But I didn’t, Jack, I didn’t. I locked it. Anyway, his parents are suing me for two million dollars. But you sold me that big personal-liability policy. Oh, thank you, Jack. I’m so grateful. Paul Revere will cover it, won’t they, Jack? The whole two million?”
Jack hemmed and hawed. “Now, hold it, Annie. Just a minute. Let me look into it. I’ll call you right back.”
Instead of calling, Jack turned up in person. When Annie came home from a trip to the library and the post office and the supermarket, she found him napping on the sofa.
She dumped a bag of groceries on the counter and stood over him angrily. “Jack, how the hell did you get in?”
Jack woke up, looked at her lazily, closed his eyes again, and muttered, “Stole a key last time I was here.”
“You stole one of my keys?” Annie was flabbergasted. “How?”
“Nothing to it. It was in your pocketbook. Right there on your pocketbook hook.” Drunkenly Jack began to sing, “You got a hook for your hat and a hook for your coat and a hook, hook, hook for your pocketbook.” Groggily he tried to sit up. “Hey, gimme a hand.”
Annie made a pot of strong coffee. She needed an insurance agent with a clear head. “Okay, Jack, now tell me. Will Paul Revere deliver on its promise?”
