“Don’t be mad, Andrew,” Francie pleaded. “Please.”
Andrew turned to her and then straightened up and, with a gentle, faraway smile, reached out to stroke her ash blond hair. “I’m not mad. I understand. Believe me. I’ll see you later.” Without another look at Beth he headed out the door into the night.
Beth ran to the door, slammed it shut, and shot the bolt. Then she leaned against it and looked at Francie.
“I can’t believe the way he was acting,” said Francie.
“He’s crazy,” said Beth.
Francie looked at Beth with troubled eyes. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on him like that. His mother, and now me leaving. It’s all just too much for him.”
“Look, I don’t care why. He sneaked into this house. He practically threatened me. You heard how he was talking.”
“I don’t think he meant all that stuff.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Francie. He’s ready to snap.”
Francie did not reply.
“Keep this locked tonight,” said Beth. “I mean it.”
Slowly, sadly, Francie nodded agreement.
Chapter 24
HE BURST THROUGH THE TOWER DOORS, his machine gun blazing as he mowed down the last of the guards. Francie turned from the barred window, her face pale from months of imprisonment and held out her arms to him. “I saw you leading your men this way,” she whispered as she crushed herself to his chest. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.” His camouflage fatigues were soaked with sweat and blood from the battle, but she didn’t seem to care. He picked her up and carried her down from the tower and out onto the balcony of the palace. Outside the palace walls hordes of people were chanting his name, blessing him for saving them. He waved to them, acknowledging their homage. Then he guided Francie over to the edge of the wall and pointed with the gun into the courtyard below. The tyrants were there, prisoners now, lined up against the courtyard wall. A firing squad stood at the ready, waiting for his signal. One of the prisoners looked up at them where they stood, the shouts of the crowd still ringing around them. It was a woman, her eyes defeated, her face haggard. She was gazing up at Francie, pleading for mercy. “She wants you to save her,” he whispered to Francie. “She thinks you’ll let her go free.” He looked down at the ash blond head. Francie was shaking it from side to side. He squeezed her to him and raised his gun. “Fire,” he screamed. “Fire.”
A light flashed on in the darkened trailer down the street as Andrew approached his house. He heard the sound of his own voice echo in the frosty night. The door to the trailer opened, and a man’s silhouette appeared, framed by the doorway. He looked up and down the street and then called out, “What the hell are you yelling about?”
“Sorry,” Andrew called back. “I didn’t mean…sorry.” The man shook his head and then slammed the door of the trailer, Andrew hurried up to the house and entered through the basement. Quickly he undressed and had his shower, straining to listen, through the cascading water, for the sound of the phone upstairs. She was sure to try to reach him. But as he emerged from the shower he was surrounded by silence.
He rubbed himself off with a stained, soggy towel that lay on the floor and then put his dirty clothes on again. He buckled his belt and trudged up the stairs, realizing, with each leaden step, that the call would not come. She would not be able to call. She would not be allowed to use the phone.
His head began to throb as if someone were tightening a metal band around it. He tried to recall the fantasy of rescuing her, but the pounding in his head prevented it. He went to the front window and stared out into the black night. He had no weapon, no army. He didn’t even have a fucking car to get them out of town. For the thousandth time he regretted the loss of the car. He didn’t even have the money to buy a car. Andrew ground the palm of his hand helplessly against the throbbing in his eyes. The band seemed to tighten around his forehead. There was no money in the house. His mother never kept any around the house, and he had gone through her purse before he put it in the car with her, and she had only a few dollars on her. He knew she had some money in the bank, but he couldn’t get at that. He had tried to get money from her accounts once and found out that he was “unauthorized” to take it out. That’s what the zit-faced teller had informed him. Unauthorized. His mother had laughed when she heard it. “I figured you would try that,” she had said, her eyes flinty, despite the laughter. “I’m always one step ahead of you.” But even as his skin prickled at the thought of her ugly, laughing face, he suddenly realized that things were different now. She was not ahead of him any longer. She was gone, and he was her sole survivor. Her heir. All he had to do was find her will and wave that under their noses at the bank. They’d have to give him the money. It would be his by law.
The thought excited him, and the band around his head seemed to loosen. All he had to do was find the will. He bolted up the stairs to his room and picked up her keys. She had always kept the door to her room locked. She had never let him come in. That’s probably where the important papers were stashed. He went down the hall and unlocked her door. He shuddered a little as he pushed the door open and thought he detected the scent of peppermint. Moonlight threw the lace pattern of the curtains onto the frayed rug. Andrew hesitated for a moment and then rushed to the bureau and switched on the dim pink bulb under the tasseled shade. He looked around warily.
The room was neat and still, a light coating of dust on the furniture tops. His heart thudded in time with his headache as he tried to decide which drawer to open first. Go ahead. He prodded himself. She is gone. With a defiant movement he threw open the jewelry box on her bureau and reached in. He pulled out a handful of worthless ropes of beads that trailed from the box like shiny intestines. He threw them down on the floor and plunged in again, unclasped pins sticking into him as he clawed through her junky collection in search of his legacy. He turned the box over, and the last few earrings tumbled out, but there were no documents. He tossed the box aside and began on the drawers.
One after another they yielded nothing but worn clothes, scarves, and underwear. Andrew tore through them, cursing her as he went, wanton piles of ripped clothing collecting on the floor around him as he emptied closets and drawers.
He had ransacked every hiding place he could think of when the trunk caught his eye. He had seen it as he scanned the room but had paid no attention to it. She used it as a piece of furniture. It was covered with a lacy cloth and an assortment of flowerpots holding the withered remnants of plants. But now, as he looked at it again, he noticed that its hasp was padlocked. For a moment he thought triumphantly that he had found it. She would keep her secret papers locked up like that. Then, in the next instant, he went weak all over as he realized what might be in there.
It was large enough. There was no doubt of that. Andrew sank to the floor, surrounded by wads of peppermint-scented clothing, and stared at the metal trunk. She had never told him what she’d done with the body. Wasn’t it possible? He felt as if he could see through the metal sides, beneath the cloth and the rust-colored pots to the hideous contents of the trunk. Was there flesh left, or only bones? He imagined eyes bulging from the skull, wisps of hair still attached to rotting flesh, the old blue coat sheltering a putrid skeleton. She would keep it here, her evidence against him. Countless times she had threatened him with it, refusing to say where she had hidden the body.
Andrew’s heart hammered against his knees, which he had drawn up and clasped to his chest. He could not take his eyes off the trunk. He had to know. But he was unable to move. Finally, as he began to ache from sitting in that fetal position, he put his hands on the floor and struggled to his feet.
With halting steps he approached the trunk. Bending over, he grabbed the edge of the lacy cloth and pulled it with a sharp, forceful yank. The flowerpots spun up and cracked against one another. They fell to the floor, dirt and roots spilling out across the carpet.
Andrew faced the naked trunk. Crouching down, he fumbled through the s
et of keys and, with shaking fingers, tried the smallest one in the padlock. The third key he tried turned and clicked, and he pulled open the stiff lock and slowly removed it from the hasp. He opened the hasp and then put his hands on the lid. He tried to summon every image of horror to his mind, so that when he lifted it, he would not be too shaken. He tried to steel himself, but he felt about as solid as gelatin. Swallowing hard, he pushed up, threw the lid open, and jumped back.
Over the rim of the trunk the corner of a brown envelope stuck up. Andrew leaned over and looked inside. The trunk was filled with papers.
Andrew exhaled and threw his head back, gulping in air. He fell on his knees beside the trunk, laughing exultantly as he reached in and pulled out ledger books, envelopes, and folders. It had to be here. There were old tax returns, yearbooks, photo albums, and receipts from ancient bills piled high inside it. Andrew began to toss them out and strew them around the room as if they were so much confetti. Papers fluttered and settled around him as he delved in again and again. But as the trunk emptied, the last will and testament of Leonora Vincent was nowhere to be found. Andrew’s sense of triumph began to dissipate as he neared the bottom.
All at once his hand met something hard and heavy. He drew back with a cry and then slowly reached in again. He pulled out an old cloth bag and opened it. A box of ammunition fell out of it, and bullets rolled across the floor. Startled, he reached back into the bag and drew out a gun. It was a .38 caliber revolver, dark and pitted with age. Andrew stared down at it in amazement. It was the gun he had shot that night. He fell back on his heels and gazed at it. This was where she had hidden it all those years. This was her evidence against him, his baby fingerprints carefully preserved on the butt and now smudged over by his adult hand.
He stared at the gruesome souvenir of his childhood with a twisted sense of satisfaction. She can’t use it on me now, he thought. He turned the gun around in his hands and examined it curiously. The barrel appeared to be clear, and when he snapped out the cylinder, he saw that it was empty but undamaged. He groped through the bullets on the floor, slipped the shells into the open weapon, and then snapped it shut again. He pretended to take aim at the pillow on his mother’s bed.
From all his reading of mercenary magazines he knew quite a bit about guns, but it was a different thing altogether to hold one in his hand. It felt good to him, as if it belonged there. And it was a weapon, something he and Francie might need.
The thought of Francie and their needs made him turn his attention reluctantly back to the trunk. Placing the gun on the floor beside him, he resumed his search. But it did not take him long to realize that the will was not there. He found a couple of bankbooks with money in the accounts, but he tossed them aside in irritation. What good were they without the will? He couldn’t prove that she had left her money to him, and the bank people would never believe him.
Her face rose before him again, mocking him. “I gave them strict instructions down at the bank not to let you near my money. I guessed that any boy who would do what you did to your own father couldn’t be trusted. Oh, no. That’s my work and my pay. I won’t have you stealing from me, running around and spending my paycheck.” She had laughed and laughed, delighted that another trap she had set had been sprung on him. Andrew slammed down the top of the trunk as if he were guillotining her head with the lid. There was no will here. She had still gotten the better of him, even now.
And then it hit him. Her paycheck. That was it. Relief flooded him. He would go get it from the dentist. Andrew’s mouth fell open in amazement at his own ingenuity. It would work. It was perfect. The dentist would give him the money, and he would have enough to get a car. Noah always kept old cars around the station. It wouldn’t be a great car, but it would be enough. Enough to get away from here. He was sure that eventually the bank would have to give him Leonora’s money. He was entitled to it now that she was dead. But if there were no will, that would probably mean a lot of legal hassle. And he had no time to wait. He had to get Francie away from here. The bank could send him the money at his new address. His and Francie’s.
Andrew rose to his feet as if in a trance, his mind alert with the details of his plan, despite the lateness of the night and his lack of sleep. He picked up the gun and carried it with him down the stairs to the foyer, where it had last been fired, years before. He took it to the closet and stuffed it into the deep side pocket of his overcoat.
Then he went back into the parlor, to await the gray-gold light of dawn. He had been awake all night, and his nerves were frayed, but he was not tired. He felt like a man who was spending his last night in prison, now able to count the time in hours until he was free. He only wished that he did not have to wait those last few hours for the world’s business to begin, so he could put his plan in motion. He thought that this must be how a general felt on the eve of a major attack. He was powerful.
At nine o’clock sharp he dialed Francie at her house.
“Hello,” said the voice.
“Get Francie,” he said.
There was silence at the other end, as if she might not obey. He was about to scream at her when he heard her place the phone down, and then he heard the squawk of her voice calling Francie’s name. In a few moments his girl came to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe,” he said.
“Hello.”
“I know you can’t talk with her there, but I want you to meet me today.”
Francie made a soft, snorting sound. “Where have I heard that before?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Anyway, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. And you have to.”
“I don’t have to do any—”
“The funeral’s today. I know you want to come.”
There was silence at Francie’s end.
“I came to yours, didn’t I?”
“I know, I know.”
“Just tell her,” said Andrew. “You have to go. She can’t say no to that. It’s at two o’clock. At the cemetery.”
There was a note of defeat in Francie’s voice. “Okay, I’ll go.”
Andrew smiled. It was going to work. “Tell her to go fuck herself,” he said softly.
“Andrew,” Francie protested.
“I’ll be with you later, babe.” He hung up and closed his eyes, relishing the glow of success. Then he reminded himself that he still had things to do. He looked down at his military watch. He didn’t have time to waste today. Andrew pulled his coat from the closet, locked the house, and started up the street to where his mother usually caught the bus to Harrison. An icy drizzle made the roads slippery, and it took him longer than usual to get up to the bench beneath a tree that served as a bus stop. He looked impatiently up the road, the rain dripping down his collar. The bus seemed to take forever to arrive, but finally he saw it coming. He climbed on board and shoved his last few dollars in the driver’s face for the fare. The driver eyed him coldly as he counted out his change into Andrew’s gloved hand. Andrew was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice.
He found a seat near the back, next to a window, and arranged his bulky overcoat around him so that the gun in the deep side pocket rested in his lap. He had almost forgotten that he had put it there the night before. But it made him feel good to know he had it with him, even though through the fabric of his coat it felt cold against his leg. The dreary landscape rolled by as he looked out, his face pressed to the window. The cold glass felt good against the feverish warmth of his cheeks and his forehead. Although he seemed to be studying the passing farms and rocky hillsides, he could not see very much through the sheet of sleet that was now coming down, pelting the bus window with little icy missiles.
In the seat across the aisle a small child was crooning, despite his mother’s best efforts to keep him quiet. The child’s cries seemed to rake across Andrew’s nerves. Andrew turned to look at the child and caught the mother’s eyes. Her apologetic expression turned offended w
hen she saw the look on Andrew’s face, and she pulled the child to her and encircled him protectively. The child quieted down, and Andrew resumed looking out the window. Once he got the car, he would never ride a bus again, he thought. It was like riding with a herd of barnyard animals.
The houses and buildings were appearing in clusters as the bus neared the town of Harrison. Andrew sat upright in the seat, ready for the stop. The woman across the aisle shoved her child’s arms into his jacket and then zipped him up. She picked up the child, and as the bus pulled up to stop just at the edge of the Harrison business district, she stood up and started to edge out of her seat. Andrew waited until she was halfway into the aisle before he jumped up and barged past her, making sure to crack the child with his elbow. The baby started to yell again as Andrew bolted down the aisle and got off the bus.
He looked up and down the deserted street and then started walking back in the direction the bus had come from. The dentist’s office was in the ground floor of his home, which was on a corner of Main Street, a few blocks from the town. Andrew had been there several times before, and he had no trouble finding the place as he walked quickly along, his collar pulled up against the sleet, his leather soles slipping along the sidewalks. There were no other walkers in the miserable weather. A few cars passed him, going slowly along, their windshield wipers plowing away the sleet as it struck. The Ridbergs lived on a corner surrounded by trees and brown, brambly bushes. A white sign out front announced the dentist’s practice. Andrew peered up the driveway and noticed that the station wagon was not there. There were lights on in the dentist’s office but none in the house. He was relieved to see it, realizing that the wife was probably not at home. He did not really want to run into her after that business with the shopping bag and the casserole. She was probably still pouting because he hadn’t wanted her dinner.
Andrew climbed the front steps and reached for the doorknob. A three-by-five card was taped to the pane in the door. The message on it was neatly typed: “Closed at 10:30 today due to funeral. Dr. Ridberg.”
Little Sister Page 23
