StoneDust

by Justin Scott

  “He came home shaking. He was so afraid of what he almost did.”

  “It’s not a problem. It’s over.”

  “Jesus,” Bill cried from across the room. “What a life! You ever think what it’s going to be like when you live here, Ben?”

  “Billy!” said Sherry.

  “Ben knows what I mean. She’s a great old lady, but she can’t live forever. Ben’s her only relative, right?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to buy my ticket like everyone else.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s giving it to the town. It’s going to be a museum.”

  Rick Bowland wanted to know if the painting in the dining room was a Whistler. I told him it was.

  “What’s a Whistler?” asked Duane. “Hey, Michelle, can I take this goddamned tie off?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The Whistler is a portrait of Connie’s Aunt Martha.”

  “What about the landscapes in the living room?”

  “The one with the buck is Landseer, an English painter. The really neat Hudson River job is by Church.”

  “Tell me the birch trees in the foyer is Levinson.”

  “More likely school of.”

  “What kind of security does she have?”

  “If you touch the frame, electric shocks are delivered direct to Trooper Moody’s mattress and car seat.”

  Bill Carter laughed. “A museum? Why not? Share it, right?”

  “I’d keep it,” said Michelle. “Wouldn’t you, Sherry?”

  “I’d open it for the house tour Christmas week and maybe for Newbury Days, if we ever get that off the ground.”

  “Me too,” said Susan. “If Ted didn’t mind.”

  “Long as they wipe their feet.”

  I eased over to the mantelpiece, propped an elbow, squire- like. Now that I had them, I had to figure out what to do with them. “Okay, gang. Let’s get down to it.”

  That sounded a little clumsy to my ear, but they didn’t notice. They thought I was talking about land.

  “Yeah,” said Duane. “What’s she selling?”

  “I want to guess,” said Michelle. “It’s that two hundred acres on Morris Mountain, isn’t it? The Fulton place?”

  Duane said, “If she’d let go that stretch on Church Hill Road, we could throw up a six-screen multiplex. Have to widen Main Street for the traffic. Zoning’ll go nuts, but hey—Ben, you get Ted and Rick to go along on a little variance and you’ll have commissions up the wazoo.”

  Half in the bag on merlot and decent brandy, Duane was probably speaking louder than he meant to. Everyone turned to me for my reaction.

  To my surprise, I heard myself talking about land too—talking in the stern tones of my ancestors.

  “Neither Connie Abbott nor I would desecrate Main Street.”

  “Just a few trees.”

  “No way.”

  “Then what the hell are we talking about here?” Duane asked. “Wha’d you get us to this dinner for?”

  I was half a mind to ask him what he was complaining about. He had scoffed down double portions of high-class Newbury stew, and exerted a near-tidal force on Connie’s wine cellar; but Michelle, too, looked suspicious, and Susan and Sherry seemed disappointed. Ted’s face was a solemn mask. Bill looked at Rick and shrugged his big shoulders.

  I said quickly, “I didn’t mean to get your hopes too high.”

  “Is she selling land or not?” Michelle demanded.

  Good question. I pretended to give it my full attention and a funny thing happened. Suddenly I was acting the part of a real estate agent and spewing out fiction with a ring of truth: “Too bad Reg isn’t here. We were batting around an idea about Connie forming a land trust.”

  “A land trust?” echoed Bill Carter. Not a phrase to make your average builder happy, conjuring visions of acreage off limits to backhoes.

  Duane growled, “Reg never said ‘land trust’ to me.”

  “It didn’t have to do with you. It had to do with Connie. This is Connie’s deal. She’s concerned with the future—not today, but tomorrow. We’re talking long term here.”

  Another phrase far from the hearts of Bill and Duane.

  “What kind of long term?”

  Winging it—within the context of serious problems Newbury would face in a future without Connie Abbott—I said, “She owns a lot of land, much of it undeveloped. Her resources are not bottomless. Nor is her estate totally immune from death taxes. A trust requires funds to preserve it. If you guys could offer some sort of package, where you’d get a small part of her holdings in return for helping to protect the vast majority, you might find her amenable.”

  “Really?” asked Michelle.

  “She’d particularly like to see some of the old farms kept going.”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” said Bill.

  “Listen—you guys are the future. Newbury will pass out of her hands. We live here. We make our livings here. We’ve got a chance to preserve it. At least think about it.”

  “We’ll think about it,” said Michelle.

  Duane said, “I can’t believe Reg never said a word about this.”

  Now was the time: and I said quietly, almost gently, “Reg Hopkins died in your house, Duane.”

  “What—”

  “I’m sorry. He ODed at your kitchen table.”

  “He left alive.”

  “Every one of you saw him dead.”

  “No!”

  I looked them each in the face. “I don’t blame you for panicking. You were high on Duane’s Tombstones. You were scared you’d be implicated in a heroin death. Christ, who needs that in Newbury? So instead of calling the cops, you decided to dump his body.”

  “That’s not true,” said Michelle.

  “Duane, and Rick, and Bill, and Ted threw him in his Blazer and drove him out to the covered bridge.”

  Duane said, “You are out of your mind, man.”

  “And while the guys were dumping him, Michelle and Georgia and Sherry and Susan cleaned up the house. The men got back at three-fifteen. Michelle, you got a bit jumpy and thought somebody was in the house. You all searched, found no one, and by four or so everyone had split.”

  The only sound in the room was the fire crackling. I prayed one of them would ask a question I could turn to my advantage. But all eight stared at me, silent and accusing, as if I had done them wrong.

  Chapter 17

  Back when I played timber wolf to the bulls and bears, investors who failed to study the prospectus might see their stock sink like an anvil in a pond. The trick to writing a prospectus, wherein the law required disclosure of any and all bad news, was to lose the bad news in a blizzard of facts. Thus had I blitzed my friends with every detail I had learned and guessed about their night with Reg.

  Unfortunately, I was pledged to protect my main source—Vicky—while almost nothing from the chainsaw wizard would withstand close scrutiny.

  “You are full of it,” said Rick. He glanced at Georgia, who was shaking her head.

  Ted was silent, dark eyes watchful. Susan had drifted near him.

  Sherry Carter snaked an arm around Bill’s shoulder. Bill said, “Jesus, Ben, you are all hosed up.”

  “Am I, Bill? Why don’t you run that by the guys who chainsawed the Hitching Post?”

  “Huh?” He looked at Duane, in apparent amazement. Duane shrugged.

  “After they renovated the bar, they went over to the Indian reservation to celebrate. When they tried to get off, you guys were blocking the bridge.”

  No one did me the favor of retorting something stupid, like, Nobody saw us. For an eon or two I leaned on Connie’s mantel while my brain chanted, Eight people can’t sustain a lie.

  But the silence deepened. Eyes averted, faces turned inward, they had time to think, to wait me out, or guess I had no more bombshells to drop on them. Had I lost the momentum? I felt their resolve hardening, like a c
hill penetrating the old house.

  “No way,” Duane said.

  Then, when I thought I’d lost them, Georgia Bowland started to cry—God love her gin-addled soul. She sniffled at first, like a child. Then her body began to heave. Tears trickled through her makeup and splashed dark stains on her blouse.

  They all looked at her, protests dying on their lips.

  “I told you we’d get caught,” she sobbed. “I told you. I—”

  “Shut up!” said Duane.

  Georgia cried harder. Duane moved toward her, his beefy frame in a threatening crouch. I went to block him, but Rick got to his wife first and laid a protective hand on her shoulder. “Leave her alone.”

  Georgia sank to the couch, crying, “I told you, I told you.”

  “Shut up!” Duane shouted at her. “Jesus, you’re the one who told Ben.”

  “I did not!”

  “You told him!”

  Rick shoved the bigger man away. “Back off, Duane.”

  Duane straight-armed him. “Just try it, Rick. Give me an excuse.”

  Bill crossed the room like lightning, hands high.

  I stepped among them. “Let’s not break up Aunt Connie’s furniture.”

  For an awful while, Georgia sobbed and we all stood around like spectators at a car wreck.

  Duane recovered first. “I’m outta here. Come on, Michelle—Don’t try to stop me, Ben.”

  “Can I tell Trooper Moody you’re going straight home?”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “I told you,” wailed Georgia.

  “Will you stop that goddamned crying?”

  Georgia sprang to her feet, pushed Rick aside, and yelled into Duane’s face. “You cried, Duane. You cried like a baby. You’re the only one who can cry? Screw you.”

  Duane got red. “Yeah, I cried…” Then he sighed and the life seemed to drain out of him. “You’re right, Georgia. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Georgia. I really am. Reg looked so…”

  Georgia sat back down on the couch. Duane sank beside her and stared at the carpet.

  I said, “Just for the record, I never talked to Georgia.”

  Michelle was gazing at Duane with a strange, almost weary expression. Now she turned on me, eyes flaring. “Ben, what are you doing to us?”

  The rest of them stared at me.

  “What are you doing to us?” she said again, louder.

  “Did you ever think of taking him to the hospital?”

  “He was dead.”

  “Were you afraid to call 911? Couldn’t call an ambulance? Try to save him?”

  “Susan said he was dead.”

  Susan stepped close, crossed her arms, and looked me in the eye. “Ben, I’m a nurse. The man was dead. He wasn’t breathing. His heart had stopped. I tried to CPR him anyway, but I knew he was dead. When we found him his irises were dilated like saucers.”

  She sounded absolutely positive, but I kept thinking, What if Reg had had one more breath hiding in his body? I felt I owed him these questions. “I thought irises constrict when you’re on dope.”

  “Only when you’re alive. When your brain dies they open wide. Believe me, Ben. He was dead.”

  Duane spoke at the carpet. “I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking all we had to do was artificial respiration or CPR or something. Susan shined a light in his eyes. It was like looking down a hole.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “The guy was gone, Ben. He just died in my kitchen.”

  I’d hoped this evening would bring some sensible answers about Reg. But all I was hearing was stuff they’d already gone through looking for their own sensible answers. And there was no satisfaction in that.

  “What are you going to do, Ben?”

  What was I going to do?

  “I’m going to start by advising you guys to go to the cops before they come to you. Fess up. Tell ’em what happened. Hire a good lawyer. It’ll be messy, but better than waiting for all sorts of obstruction-of-justice charges landing on you like a ton of bricks.”

  “What about Janey?” asked Michelle.

  “I’ve got to tell Janey that Reg did indeed definitely die of a heroin OD. What else can I tell her? I wish to hell I could give her better news.”

  “Are you going to tell her about us?”

  “Don’t you think she’ll figure that out on her own when you go to the cops?”

  “Do we have to?” asked Bill. His plaintive abused-bear expression reminded me of fourth grade, when, for some infraction, we were sent out on a cold day to beat erasers.

  “Do you have to what?”

  “Go to the cops?”

  “If you don’t I will. Cause now you’ve got me in this damned mess. I know exactly what happened. I have a certain responsibility to report what sounds a lot like a crime.”

  “Ben,” Ted said quietly, “no one knows but us.” He took Susan’s hand.

  “I found out.”

  “No one else is asking questions,” said Rick Bowland. He was trying to sound indignant, but he was rubbing his mustache like poison ivy.

  “Ben, please,” said Sherry, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs, smoothing her slacks over her knees.

  “No. I have to ask you, please. I didn’t do it. You all did. I’m just trying to help out Janey and I end up in the middle of this mess.”

  Rick, again: “If you’ll stop feeding Janey Hopkins false hope, she won’t push the insurance company and they’ll have no reason to investigate.”

  Michelle waited until the others ran down. She contained her earlier anger and appeared almost subdued as she ran her fingers through her short black hair.

  “Ben, there is nothing to be gained by turning us in. Like we said before, Reg is dead. Putting us through hell won’t bring him back.”

  “That’s right,” said Rick. “Ben, IBM is firing people by the thousands. I stand a chance to be promoted—up above it. You know what the guys competing would do with my picture in the paper? They’ll fax it to every district manager in the world. Please. I’m telling you I’m dead if this gets out.”

  I looked at Ted.

  “I already told you what’ll happen to me, Ben,” he said quietly. “Same goes for Susan at the daycare.”

  “Just when we were getting back on our feet,” Susan whispered.

  Bill Carter said, “There isn’t a son of a bitch born who can fire me; but I gotta wonder what my banks will do if they think I’m facing charges.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Sherry. “They’ll call in our loans and shut us down.”

  Duane was still staring at the floor. I looked at Michelle, who was worrying the fringe on one of Connie’s reading lamps. She gazed back, her eyes brave.

  “I’m not worried about the business. Duane’s done a hell of a job getting us established. Anybody gets high and mighty with us, they’ll wish they hadn’t. And I really don’t give a fuck about my reputation in Newbury. But my kids have to ride the school bus and sit in class. Kids are cruel, Ben. My children’ll pay the price—It wasn’t our fault! Reg crashed our party and died in our house. The ultimate party crash. Funny, isn’t it? He checks out and ruins our lives at the same time. I wonder if he planned it.”

  Duane looked up. “Give the guy a break.”

  “We’re still his victims,” Michelle retorted. “It doesn’t seem fair. Jesus, every time we gave a party, every time we had people over, he’d show up!”

  “Hey, the guy was my best friend. Your best friend’s allowed to drop in when he wants. I did the same with him. Okay?”

  “No, it wasn’t okay. I couldn’t do anything without him showing up. He spoiled—”

  “Will you let him alone, for God’s sake. He’s dead.”

  “Yeah, he’s dead. And now he’s killing us—Ben…” She looked back at me again, pleading, fighting to build a smile. “Ben, isn’t there something we could work out?…Like maybe me and Sherry and
Susan and Georgia could sleep with you for a night.”

  Seven jaws dropped—eight, counting mine. Sixteen eyes popped wide. Connie’s library hadn’t been so quiet since her father died at his desk.

  “Okay, a weekend.”

  Sherry, Susan, and Georgia edged nearer their husbands.

  Michelle raked her hair.

  “That was a joke, everybody. I’m just trying to lighten this up a little so we can work something out. Oh, shit, now I’ve made things worse. Georgia, please stop crying…”

  By this point I was feeling sorry for everyone. I didn’t know what I would have done in their situation that night. I hoped I would have dialed 911 even if he seemed dead as ice. But, half in the bag and shocked and frightened of the consequences—and more than a little angry at Reg for dumping the mess of his life on mine—I might have done just what they did: screamed and carried on and eventually got ahold of myself and taken charge and schemed to save my innocent skin.

  “I have a question,” I said. “It’s a tough one, but I’ve got to ask it.”

  “What?” Michelle asked, when the others failed to respond.

  “Who sent Janey Hopkins a picture of her children with a threatening note?”

  Jaws sagged again, and even lower when Michelle raised her hand and said, “Guilty!”

  “You?”

  “It was stupid, foolish, dumb, and all the other things I do when I get scared. I really was scared. I thought—stupidly—it would make her go away.”

  “Michelle?” Sherry wailed. “How could you?”

  “What did you write?” Susan asked, clearly appalled.

  “I don’t remember. It wasn’t really threatening, like I’ll kidnap them or anything. Was it, Ben?”

  “I don’t believe you did that,” Georgia sobbed. Then, swatting with both hands at her tears, she shouted, “You’re terrible! How could you threaten children?”

  Michelle hung her head, stared at the floor, and in the deathly silence struggled to regain her composure. Her voice trembling, she said, “I didn’t threaten them, Georgia. I didn’t say anything like I’d hurt them or anything. Did I, Ben?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Nothing like that. On the other hand, you figure out how you’d react if it was your kids in the picture.”