StoneDust

by Justin Scott

  “Alison?”

  “She’s a kid. The Republicans would rather send their kids to private school. Steve La France would prefer volunteers from the National Rifle Association teaching classes in a tent. I’m the only person who can convince people to pass a decent school budget and keep this town alive.”

  “Relax. You’ll be governor before you know it. Do it by fiat.”

  “If I can’t get re-nominated at this level, I’ll never get a shot at governor and you know it. So back off. Okay?”

  I didn’t say anything, but I felt my head sort of nodding. Then the telephone rang. Vicky walked to the window and stared out at Main Street. Her dress dipped in back too, and I could see she was breathing hard.

  “Hi, Ben. Greg Riggs over in Plainfield. How are you today?”

  “Pretty good, Mr. Riggs. How are you?”

  I have an old-fashioned stiff and prickly side to my personality that I blame on my Aunt Connie: I don’t like people I’ve never met calling me by my first name, particularly on the telephone and especially when I have a splitting headache and am losing an argument with the government of Newbury.

  “I guess you know who I am?”

  “I’ve heard of you.”

  “And you’re probably aware that I’m representing, or was, Janey Hopkins in her divorce action.”

  “I assume Reg’s death moots that.”

  “I’m calling for a favor and I can imagine you can guess what that favor is.”

  “I’d rather not guess.”

  “It’s this detective thing.” Riggs waited for silence to loom, but in my day I’d paid for too many lawyers’ Mercedes Benzes to fall for that one, so I waited, too, filling the time by admiring the sweet line of Vicky’s back. Eventually, Greg Riggs broke his own silence.

  “Look, Ben. Janey is really upset.”

  “I agree with you there,” I said. “I don’t know her as well as you, of course, but I think she’s on the verge of falling apart.”

  “Well, with what she’s been through, you’re not surprised, are you?”

  “Like I say, you know her better than I do.”

  “The thing is…Look, I’ll level with you. I wish you’d drop it—she told me about hiring you. I’d be extremely grateful if you’d take your expenses and return the rest of her money and just let’s all get on with our lives before this turns really messy.”

  “Messy?”

  “You said it. The woman is ready to flip out.”

  “I already tried to return her money. She made it clear she’d hire somebody else. Figuring he might not be as marvelous a fellow as I, I told her I’d take another shot.”

  “I appreciate your honesty.”

  “Call it loyalty in this case.”

  “You mean Reg?”

  “We were friends.”

  “I appreciate your loyalty as well as your honesty, but the fact remains this ‘investigation’ of yours is dragging out and delaying the whole process of recovery Janey’s got to go through.—Look, I want to level with you.”

  I slid a little lower in bed and moved the phone from my ear, on the theory that when a lawyer offers twice in one minute to level with me I’m about to hear the sounds of silence. He confirmed my fear, after a dramatic pause, by stating even more dramatically, “Man to man, Ben?”

  “Go, Mr. Riggs.”

  “A number of, shall we say, ‘important’ people are of the opinion I should run for public office.” He didn’t say which office. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to sound hostile. I didn’t want to annoy the man. He was destined to become a power in the county and it’s bad business to alienate powers in the county.

  “Without going into too many details on the telephone…”

  “You’re welcome to come over,” I said.

  “No, I see no reason why we can’t wrap this up on the phone. What I’m trying to say is…When Janey hired me to handle her divorce, I wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity. If you get my drift.”

  “Uh huh.” Was I hearing right? Was this lawyer really stupid enough to plead his own mistress’s divorce?

  As if sensing my astonishment, he said, “I really love her. Very much. If this tragedy were allowed to fade away as such things do—as such tragedies should—I wouldn’t have to face questions based on loose talk, if I decide to run for office.”

  No stranger to love and stupidity, I said, “Let me think about it. I’ve made her certain promises I can’t break.”

  “I think I can control Janey.”

  “Well, I’ll still have to think about it.”

  In a brisk, let’s-wrap-up-this-meeting voice, designed to secure a tacit commitment, Riggs said, “Thanks, Ben. I know you’ll see sense.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Empathy notwithstanding, and in spite of powers in the county, I was in no mood to be patronized by a sharpie from Plainfield.

  “I mean I won’t forget you’ve been sensible. I’ll make it up to you, Ben. Throw something your way.”

  “How about a bone?”

  “What?”

  “Screw you.” I slammed my phone down on the night table, with an impact that seemed to shatter my skull.

  Vicky jumped.

  “You told Greg Riggs, ‘Screw you’?”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “He’s hosting a fundraiser for me.”

  “I’ll mail a check.”

  “Ben!”

  “Did you know that Janey Hopkins’s live-in divorce attorney had something going with her before she left Reg?”

  “You are a gossip.”

  “Screw you too.”

  “Ben!”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “What did he say to get you so mad?”

  “I’m going to find that woman in the woods if it kills me.”

  “Ben, you promised.”

  “No. There is something going on here I’m not getting.” I sat up in bed, pounding my fist into my palm with a thud that made me wince and squeeze my temples. Vicky looked torn between sympathy and a desire to tear my heart out. So I winced again.

  She came and sat beside me on the bed. Laying a cool finger on my brow, she said, “Ben. Listen to me.”

  “I promise I will do it quietly. More quietly than I have so far. But I am going to find out if she was at the party, if she was a she or he, and what he or she saw of Reg.”

  Vicky pressed a little harder. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “Really secret. You can’t tell anybody.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “Guess who ran into the woods.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Chapter 14

  I was surprised the sun was still shining. It seemed to me as if Vicky and I had sat silently staring at the sheets for about ten hours.

  Finally, I asked, “Did you see Reg?”

  “Let me tell you what happened.”

  “And then maybe you’ll tell me why you haven’t told me before.”

  “Maybe I will,” she said, coolly, in a clear announcement that, having bit this particular bullet, it was her bullet and she would chew it up or spit it out as she pleased.

  Vicky stood up, circled the bed, grabbed hold of one of the posts, and hugged it to her chest. Her dress was snug on top, loose below her waist. She had pretty knees and perfect calves and Cinderella feet. Her arms were bare and shapely, her skin white, as she’d hardly been outdoors since the nominating challenge started. She had a few freckles with which, on occasion, we had played “connect the dots.”

  Most of her story, she told to the bedspread. Now and then she shook her curls, as if to rattle certain memories loose. Once she looked me full in the face, with an expression that said she was on her own and expected nothing from me. I felt I wanted to help her and then I felt guilty, realizi
ng I’d had my chances to help her and hadn’t.

  “I was surprised when you left the cookout so early,” she said. “You inhaled some lamb and you were gone. I’d kind of thought you’d stay ’til nine and then maybe we’d hook up and go someplace.”

  “Yeah, well I had—”

  “Whatever. Anyway, you were gone by seven. I had a couple beers. Three or four, actually, and I figured what the heck and drove back to town.”

  “You left too?”

  “I went up to headquarters to get some work done.”

  Vicky came from a large Irish family. While they didn’t drink beer for breakfast, she could call upon a certain capacity when in the mood. As I knew she could function clearly on four beers, I wondered why she mentioned the count.

  “Tim was there.”

  If Tim Hall had his way, he’d marry Vicky and they’d live happily ever after, with Vicky running for higher and higher office while he managed her campaigns. His was both a romantic and practical dream, but Vicky was not cooperating.

  “Tim wanted to go to the cookout. I realized I was starving; I hadn’t eaten anything there. So we drove back out to the Fisks’. His car, because I shouldn’t have been driving. The beers were hitting me on an empty stomach. We got there about eight-thirty.

  “It looked like the whole town was there. All the burgers and sausages were gone and Duane had maybe one morsel of lamb left. Tim and I split it on a piece of bread and had a couple of beers.

  “Duane and Michelle started trying to shut it down. People started sort of milling toward the cars. Tim and I ran into the Meadows brothers. They had a cooler in their pickup truck, and they’re really generous and I was feeling no pain, so we had a couple in the driveway.”

  “We’re up to eight beers.”

  “No, the Meadows had a Margarita mix. It was after nine o’clock. I’ve been really stressed for various reasons and I was finally feeling relaxed. Tim said he wanted to go. He was starving. He thought we ought to get a pizza. I thought I ought to have one more with the Meadows. Tim couldn’t, he was driving, but I wasn’t, so why shouldn’t I have one more? It was a beautiful night, warm and soft. And it’s so dark out there. The Meadows were trying to show me the Milky Way and Tim got really bent out of shape. He’s usually so damned nice. But not that night. Anyway, we had a few words and I finally told him to leave me alone.

  “Tim went tearing off in his car. I didn’t care. I could catch a ride with the Meadows. So we were standing there; there were still a lot of people, and Duane and Michelle were beginning to look put out.

  “I decided to have another Margarita. The Meadows, not driving, joined me, and the three of us lay down on the lawn to check out the Milky Way some more, which didn’t work too well because of all the headlights as people started driving home.”

  Vicky, still hugging my bedpost, shook her head. “Part of me was saying, ‘This is kind of fun, lying in the grass between two handsome young fellows.’ What are they, Ben, twenty-two?”

  “Somewhere at that virile stage.”

  “I was having a ball. Another part of me, of course, was praying no headlights illuminated the candidate for renomination sprawled on the lawn with the Meadows brothers. And a third part was saying, ‘Once all these headlights have gone, I’m possibly going to have to deal with these two handsome young men.’ But with six beers and three Margaritas, I decided I’d cross that bridge when I had to. So I was watching the Milky Way and the Meadows were chatting away on either side of me, when I gradually began to hear what they’re saying: They’re wondering if I would give them a—”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “Guess.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “A contract to mow town lawns. Can you believe that?”

  “Well, they are in the mowing business.”

  “Ben, am I ugly?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Am I that old?”

  “Still south of thirty.”

  “I asked myself both these questions, and as there was no one else I could ask, I decided, How about another Margarita? The Meadows ran and got it. There were just a few people left by then. It must have been almost ten and I suddenly had to pee. I noticed Duane and Michelle saying goodbye to another carload, so I headed for the house, trailing the Meadows, who were explaining why they deserved such a contract.”

  “Well, they do,” I interjected. “They’re the best mowers in Newbury.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re not the best diplomats, and I suddenly said, ‘You have some nerve getting me drunk to talk business.’

  “They slunk off. I felt terrible, ’cause they’re so young, but I had to pee so bad I thought I would die. So I ran to the house and slipped in the back door.

  “Somebody was already in the mudroom bathroom. I headed for the front powder room. But I heard people talking and suddenly realized I might look slightly smashed.”

  “And grass-stained?”

  “Let’s just say I was not looking very First Selectmanish. It’s a big house. They have a back stairs. I ran up it and found a guest bathroom.”

  Vicky straightened up, let go of the bedpost, and rubbed her face. “Boy was I blitzed. The walls started circling like sea gulls. I thought I was going to get sick. But it passed. And I guess after a while I fell asleep.”

  “In the bathroom?”

  “It had this wonderful thick carpet. The money they spend!”

  Nobody straight ever got rich in Newbury politics. Vicky’s own home was a cute little cottage hidden behind the Congregational church. A New Yorker would recognize it as a smallish studio apartment partitioned into a one-bedroom.

  “Nobody tried to use the bathroom?”

  “I heard voices in the guest room. I quick crawled over and locked the door. It was a guest-room bathroom, inside the guest room, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ve heard of such an arrangement.”

  Vicky was getting so distracted, she took no notice of my smart-assedness. “Two people were talking—a man and a woman.”

  “Recognize the voices?”

  She gave me a none-of-your-business-you-filthy-gossip-and-besides-it’s-not-germane look and grabbed the bedpost again.

  “What were they talking about?”

  “Tombstones.”

  “Okay, don’t tell me. All I meant was were they talking about Reg.”

  “Tombstones were a drink Duane was mixing in the party-room bar. Brandy, vodka, bourbon, heavy cream—”

  “Stop!”

  “I almost threw up. Anyway, after a while they stopped talking and—figure it out for yourself. I was trapped in the bathroom, so I lay down again and I must have fallen asleep again. Next thing I knew, I was dreaming a jet was landing on the house.”

  I looked at her. “A jet?”

  “It might have been a vacuum cleaner—one of those central vacuums? I heard yelling and doors slamming. Finally, I really woke up. I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe it. Three in the morning!”

  “‘Wake up, little Susie!’”

  “I lay there thinking, ‘Oh God, oh God.’ Finally it occurred to me, at three in the morning they’d all be asleep. I could just slip away. Right? Wrong. As soon as I opened the door I heard voices. A lot of voices. ‘Oh God. Oh God!’ So I said to myself, ‘Vicky, you’ve got to be cool, got to be smart. Find out what’s going on.’

  “I listened real carefully. All the voices were coming from the kitchen. And they were all women’s voices. No guys. So I thought, okay, like too many parties around here, the guys are in one room, the girls in the kitchen. That put the guys in the party room, ’cause I couldn’t hear them, and it’s far away in that whole new wing they built.”

  “The women were talking really loudly. Michelle was practically screaming. And Georgia was crying. Susan was comforting her. And Sherry was arguing with Michelle, but not very hard.”

  “Arguing about what?”

/>   “I couldn’t tell, at first. It was just noise, downstairs. I thought maybe whoever snuck off to the guest room got caught.”

  “Wait. Wait. Wait. Three o’clock. They told me they all went home at one-ten.”

  “Three.”

  “Is it conceivable that maybe the Meadows Brothers rolled on your watch while entering their bid?”

  “This is a perfect example of why people shouldn’t keep guns in their house. If I had access to a gun right now, you’d be dead meat.”

  “Did you see three o’clock on any other clock?”

  “Yes. There was a lighted alarm clock in the guest room that said three. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Jeez, Ben. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were jealous.”

  “Okay, so at three o’clock the women are arguing in the kitchen. And the guys are in the party room.”

  “I thought they were in the party room. I snuck past the back stairs, down a hall to the front stairs—you know, that big, wide, open staircase with all the whatever you call that stuff.”

  “Banisters and balustrades. Some poor carpenter owed Duane a fortune. The way I heard it, they locked him in the house until he built that staircase.”

  “Well, he did a lousy job, because it creaked. And all of a sudden I heard Michelle yelling, ‘Who’s that?’ And she and the rest of them came tearing out of the kitchen. Thank God the front door wasn’t locked. They would have caught me if it was. But I got out the door and through the screen.”

  “They didn’t see you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Not even a glimpse of your hair?”

  “Well, maybe when they turned on the floodlights, but I don’t think so, because by then I was quite a ways down the driveway.”

  “Running.”

  “That’s when I remembered my car was at Tim’s office.”

  “Is it possible you were still a little high on Margaritas?”

  “For God’s sake, Ben, I was high, sick, dead-tired, and scared. I mean, look—why was I running at all?”