by Gerry Boyle
“—Adrianna, a little after ten, and Donna was okay then. But she was dead by eleven.”
I sipped my tea.
“But what if she was already dead? What if she was dead in her bed but Marcia thought she was asleep?”
“Then why did she come back?”
“Maybe she just came by to check on both of them,” I said. “‘Found Adrianna in bed and Donna passed out. Or she thought she was passed out. So she took Adrianna home. When she came back to check on Donna, see if she was okay, she found she wasn’t passed out. She was dead.”
“But you say Tanner says he didn’t do it.”
“And I believe him.”
“Just like that?”
“That’s how juries do it. They listen and go with their gut.”
“And you’re a jury of one?” Roxanne said.
“Yup.”
“So who did it, then?”
“Marcia?” I said.
“Police don’t think so, according to what that Detective What’s-his-name said.”
“Maybe they haven’t asked her,” I said.
“And you want to?”
“It’s either that, or let the whole thing drop right here.”
“And you won’t do that,” Roxanne said.
“I have to know what happened.”
She looked down at her cup.
“I don’t like this,” Roxanne said. “I feel like you’re being sucked down a drain or something, swirling closer and closer. What if you get too close?”
I smiled.
“Clair’ll protect me.”
“Clair’s fifteen miles away, Jack.”
“No plan is perfect,” I said.
So there really was only one thing left to do, and that was to go to Marcia and try to talk to her, to divine something from her words, her eyes, her attitude, her niece.
I knew it. Roxanne knew it. Neither of us wanted to say it, so we sat in silence and watched the traffic going by, the English sparrows skittering in the gutter for crumbs. An old man, a hard drinker by the looks of him, walked by in shoes that were three sizes too big. A woman came out of the parking lot, holding a little girl’s hand. The little girl’s sundress was too small. The woman, stocky in her sneakers and jeans, was weathered and grim. Nobody would stop to let them cross, and they stood there and waited on the curb in what seemed to me to be a humiliating exercise.
“That’s what I can’t stand,” I said.
“What?” Roxanne said.
“To see somebody humiliated like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that woman there with the little girl. Why don’t they let her cross, the sons of bitches? Why didn’t they leave Donna alone? It’s like they see somebody at a disadvantage and they harass them and peck at them and torment them until they can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand cruelty. I really can’t. She ought to step out in the street with a baseball bat and start smashing windshields.”
Roxanne looked at me thoughtfully.
“Sorry,” I said. “Must be the caffeine.”
I smiled.
“Let’s go,” Roxanne said.
She got up and I followed.
We headed back across town, with Marcia rising like a specter in the backseat. Neither of us spoke, except when Roxanne asked me to stop at the natural-foods place. I pulled the Olds in beside the Volvos and Saabs and waited as Roxanne went inside. She came out with a big paper bag.
“Some nice bread,” she said. “For Clair and Mary. It’s really nice of them to let us stay with them.”
“They enjoy the company.”
“It’s still nice.”
“And it’s the least they’d do. Clair would do anything for us. It’s really kind of amazing.”
“I know. Maybe you should bring him to the sister’s house.”
“So he can cover me if she comes to the door with an Uzi?”
“It’s no joke,” Roxanne said.
“Who’s joking?” I said.
The rest of the ride home was somber. I drove slowly, one eye on the temperature gauge. We saw an immature bald eagle coming up the Kennebec as we crossed the bridge, but all I could do was point halfheartedly. Roxanne nodded. We kept going, past the mini-malls and convenience stores, past the farms, out into the woods, which seemed remote and deep and forbidding. And twenty dark minutes later we pulled up in front of the house, its blackened beams sticking out of the rubble like some charred skeleton, something for the forensics people to puzzle over.
And they did, late in the afternoon. Roxanne was out in the perennial gardens with Mary. I was in the Varneys’ kitchen, trying to reach Millie on the phone. The number I had in Santa Fe had been changed to another number in Santa Fe. That number was answered by a machine that played what sounded like Gregorian chants. I left a message telling someone that Millie’s house in Prosperity had burned and that I needed her to call me. She probably was in Ecuador. Or Sierra Leone.
But I’d done everything I could. I hadn’t been able to say that too often lately.
Clair came into the kitchen from outside as I hung up the phone. He got two glasses from the cupboard and a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator.
“I don’t even know if Millie had insurance,” I said.
“Millie? Insurance? Are you kidding?” Clair said.
“Then how would she get a mortgage?”
“Mortgage? Millie? Are you kidding?” he said. “The fire marshal’s office investigator is down there. She went by and I told her you’d come over.”
“Shouldn’t be too tough. There’s the gas can. There’s the house.”
“They have to prove it for court. This guy gets a good lawyer, they’d better have all their ducks in place.”
“You know, it could’ve been a double murder,” I said.
“Triple if I’d caught up to him. Heck with taking any license-plate numbers.”
“You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
“If he’d killed you two?” Clair said. “Without question.”
“I may have another favor to ask you.”
“I’m here.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“Don’t get all mushy on me now.”
“Do you think this is male bonding?”
“Oh, God almighty. I should’ve known better than to open my door to somebody from away.”
“Too late,” I said. “We’ve got squatters’ rights.”
“Speaking of which, you gonna rebuild on that same spot? I bet Millie will just give you the land. She’ll think it has bad karma now.”
“She’d be right. But what do I know about building houses?”
“As much as I can teach you in a summer,” Clair said.
“As long as we don’t start tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“That’s where the favor comes in,” I said. “What are you doing after church?”
The fire investigator was quiet and professional. She wanted to know the layout of the rooms, what I had stored in the shed, which no longer existed. I showed her what had been the kitchen, what had been the loft, what had been the front room. She took notes on a clipboard, pictures with an automatic Minolta. We finished the tour out front and stared at the rubble.
“And the gasoline was in the shed?”
“Yeah. A two-gallon can. For my chain saw. It’s under there somewhere, I guess. The saw is, too.”
“Good thing they got the guy,” she said.
“Better than the alternative, I suppose.”
She looked at me curiously.
“So why’d this person do this, anyway?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I guess it started when I wrote something about him in the paper.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“And then he wanted me to give him the number of my bank card.”
She listened.
“And I wouldn’t give it to him.”
“So he burned your house down.”
“Yup,” I s
aid.
She shook her head.
“Good thing you weren’t in it.”
“But he didn’t know that. I guess planning isn’t his forte.”
“Forte,” she said. “Right.”
She turned back toward her car, which looked like a police cruiser but was white.
“You know, things like this don’t happen too often around here,” she said, turning back to me. “It’s not like it’s New York or Florida or something.”
I looked over the mess that had been a house.
“That’s what people keep telling me,” I said. “But I’m beginning to wonder.”
The investigator shook my hand warily and left. I walked through the mess one more time, picking at the rubble. A couple of picture frames: glass broken, photographs gone. Winter clothes in a soggy mess. My books and binoculars under there somewhere. All my music.
I sighed and then headed back up through the field. Mary and Roxanne met me on their way in from the garden, their arms laden with white and yellow flowers.
“Asters,” Roxanne said. “And forget-me-nots.”
“They’re like the phoenix; beauty rising from the ashes,” Mary said. “We have to remember to be thankful that you’re both okay.”
I looked at Roxanne. Her skin was flushed from the sun. Tendrils of hair had slipped forward on her temples. She looked at me and her eyes glowed.
“We are thankful,” I said.
I walked with them back to the house. It was almost five. A late-afternoon breeze had come up, chasing away the mosquitoes and blackflies. Mary said we’d eat on the back lawn. Grilled chicken and baked potatoes with rosemary, done on the coals. The salad would be a meal in itself.
But first we had drinks, sitting out on the white Adirondack chairs. Clair came over from the barn, went in to wash his hands, and came out with a Budweiser for himself and a Ballantine for me.
“You know I had to look all over for this stuff,” he said.
“It’s for discerning palates,” I said, taking the can.
Mary came out with two glasses of white wine. Roxanne brought up the rear, with a plate of cheese and sliced fruit and crackers. We stood for a moment and raised our glasses.
“To good fortune,” Mary said.
“And dumb luck,” I said.
“The only kind,” Clair said.
“Take it when we can get it,” Roxanne said. “Cheers.”
Glasses clinked, and they sipped. I took a long swallow, but it didn’t taste quite right. Clair caught my eye and seemed to be thinking the same thing.
It tasted premature.
28
Sunday morning was overcast but not raining. I stood alone in the kitchen, where a nearly empty bottle of white zinfandel was the only remnant of dinner the night before. Roxanne had fallen asleep early, coming down after all the stress of the fire and the police. Clair and Mary had gone to bed even earlier, in a somewhat awkward attempt to give us privacy. I sat up alone, considering what to do this morning. It was eight thirty and I was still alone.
Roxanne was in the shower. Clair and Mary had stopped by the store in Albion to get the Sunday paper. I dialed the phone and stood by the counter as it rang.
Once. Twice.
Three times.
“Hello,” a suspicious voice said.
“Marcia?” I said.
“Who is this?”
“Jack McMorrow.”
I waited for a click. It didn’t come.
“I need to talk to you. For your own good. For Adrianna’s.”
“I don’t need to talk to you, McMorrow. I’m calling the police.”
“No, please, this is important. I’m not—”
The phone clicked. Then clicked again. Then I heard the dial tone. The house was quiet.
I waited fifteen seconds and dialed again. The phone rang, but Marcia didn’t answer. But then, she wasn’t calling the cops, either. I hung up the phone.
Upstairs, the shower stopped. I put water on for tea and coffee and went up to see Roxanne. She stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.
“Make yourself right at home,” I said.
“They’re gone, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but what if the plumber showed up? Or the furnace man?”
“Or the butcher or the baker or the candlestick maker?” Roxanne said.
“Them too.”
“They’d have to avert their eyes.”
Ordinarily, I would have attempted to parlay this into a joke. Not this time.
“What time do you want to go?” I said.
“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” Roxanne said, walking toward the bedroom.
“When Clair and Mary get home?”
“Okay,” she said.
I hoped it was.
We had coffee and tea in nervous silence. I toasted half a bagel and put peanut butter on it, but only for something to do. I ate two bites and left it on the plate. At 9:05, I heard Mary’s Jeep pull into the drive. Two doors slammed and then the back door opened and they came in. Clair had the Maine Sunday Telegram under his arm. Mary was carrying a plastic jug of orange juice.
They stopped.
“You ready?” I said.
“I’ll follow you,” Clair said.
“So you are going to do this?” Mary said.
“Oh, we’ll be home before lunch,” Clair said. “Keep the coffee water on.”
“I hope you understand, Mary,” I said.
“Clair explained it to me. I suppose I do. I just have this feeling that I used to get when the girls would be going off on dates. I knew they had to do it, but I couldn’t wait for that car to pull in the driveway and they’d be home, safe and sound.”
“So we can’t tell you not to wait up,” Roxanne said, smiling.
“I’ll be here by the phone,” Mary said, and then she turned away and opened the refrigerator to put the juice away. We moved to the door.
“I’ll be behind you guys,” Clair said. “But not too close.”
We stepped out into the dooryard.
“Just cover my rear end,” I said.
“So what else is new,” Clair said, and he walked off toward the barn.
We got in the truck and I started it, wheeled around, and headed out the drive and down the road. Roxanne idly played with her hair.
“You sure you want to have anything to do with this?” I said.
She answered looking straight ahead. “When’s the last time you had a meaningful conversation with a four-year-old?”
“I don’t know. Probably when I was four.”
“I rest my case.”
“But I remember it like it was yesterday,” I said.
“For me it was the day before yesterday and the day before that. The case still rests.”
When we pulled up to the intersection of the dump road, I stopped and watched the mirror. After a moment, Clair’s big four-wheel-drive pickup came into view. He flashed his headlights once and I pulled out. When I got up to the main road, he was still back there. I headed for Albion.
We drove in silence through Albion village and well into the farms of East Winslow. I pointed skyward at a turkey vulture and Roxanne nodded, then looked out the window on her side.
“What if her husband is home?”
“Sundays are double time. I don’t think this mythical spouse will be around. If he is, well, it’ll be interesting to meet him.”
“So you think Adrianna might come outside?”
“It isn’t raining and she has to go out sometime, right? If not, I’ll see if I can get Marcia to let me through the door. She talked a little last time, and she didn’t hang up on me right away this morning.”
“How long did it take?” Roxanne asked.
“Ten or fifteen seconds.”
“Poured her heart out, did she?”
“Progress is made in small increments,” I said.
“Or not at all,” Roxanne said.
“That’s the spirit,” I said
.
When we came into Winslow, I could feel my breath quicken. Roxanne was quiet. I watched for Clair’s truck in my rearview mirror but didn’t see it.
Semper Fi, don’t fail me now, I said to myself.
Marcia’s road appeared too soon, and once we were on it, it seemed as though it had shortened. We came around the corner and there was Marcia’s house, sitting in its half-acre square of pasture. Her car was in the driveway, but the truck was gone. I went by once and continued on for a quarter-mile, pulling in and turning beside a run-down hay barn. As I pulled out, Clair’s truck came into view. As he went by, he gave me a crisp salute. In the mirror, I saw his brake lights come on.
“Well, here goes,” I said.
I pulled the car into the driveway and parked at the end by the road. There was no sign of activity in the front windows, but I could see a few neon-orange and yellow toys in the fenced-in area out back. So Adrianna did play sometimes.
Roxanne reached over and gave my hand a squeeze.
“See you in a sec,” I said. “Watch to see if any of those toys move.”
I got out of the car and walked up the flagstones to the front door. The gauzy curtains were down in the windows and the inside door was closed. I climbed the steps and listened. Thought I heard something. I pressed the bell.
Waited.
Reached out to press the bell again—
—when the door squeaked. Shuddered slightly and then drew open, very slowly. Four fingers reached out and pulled it open wider. The fingers were very small.
“Hi,” Adrianna said through the screen.
“Hi, there,” I said quietly. “You’re Adrianna.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You do?” I said.
“‘Yeah, you’re Jack in the Beanstalk.”
“Right,” I said. “We met before, didn’t we?”
“Uh-huh. With my mommy. My mommy’s not here. She went to heaven.”
“I know she did,” I said. “I’m sure she’s very happy there.”
“Uh-huh. My aunt said she can hear us. And someday we’ll get to go see her there.”
I looked at her. Big dark eyes. Curly hair. Very small hands and wrists and arms. A lot of trust.
“Is your aunt home now?”
“Yes,” Adrianna said.
“Can I talk to her?”
