Your turn. You tell me.
He might be strong enough to resist goading, but I was all too human. I was also impatient. Flirting was all fine and dandy—caution was all fine and dandy—but he was the one who had mentioned mercury. If he had information, I wanted it.
Mercury. Either you still use it in some illicit capacity, or there is pollution from the past that was never cleaned up. How’m I doing?
Not bad. Forget the first; we don’t use mercury now. But the past continues to be a problem.
In what sense?
If I tell you, what’ll you do with the information?
That depends on whether I decide I can trust what you say. You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this.What’s in it for you? What do you expect me to do? And why don’t you do it yourself?
Why don’t I do it myself? Oh, I’ve tried. I’ve talked to people, but they refuse to listen. And I’m in a difficult position. If I go too far, I stand to lose my ties with Northwood. Those ties mean a lot to me.
What do I expect you to do? There’s some information I don’t have. I need you to be my legs for that. For the rest, I need you to be my voice.
I thought of Tom. Hadn’t he too talked with people? Wasn’t he too in a difficult position? No, I didn’t think Tom was TrueBlue. TrueBlue said he had been with Northwood awhile. Not only was Tom relatively new to town, but he wasn’t with the mill at all.
Still, he was using me. These two men shared that. So now I replied to TrueBlue.
You need me to be your sacrificial lamb, you mean.
I hit “send” with more force than was needed, but I was amazed at the man’s gall. He wanted me to do his dirty work. So much for flirting. He was using me.
I was tempted to turn off my computer—to hang up on the guy, so to speak—just turn around and walk away. That’s what my passionately defensive Middle River persona would have me do.
But I was grown-up enough to pause, to think, to realize that if this man had information that would benefit me, the using was two-sided. If he had information that would explain my mother’s illness, and if his information implicated Northwood Mill, wouldn’t I be successful on two counts?
How would you be a sacrificial lamb? You’d be righting a wrong. You’d be finding out why your mother died. You’d be doing something good for all the people who live in MiddleRiver. If nothing else, think of the children. Mercury is devastating in children. How can you turn your back on that?
You’re doing it.
No. If you don’t agree to help, I’ll find someone else. I’ve been at this awhile. I have other coals in the fire. I may not be willing to be out there and in your face. I may not be willing to sacrifice my name and my place. But I’m committed. Think about it—you may not get a better offer. I’m logging off now.
I did think about it for a good long time and then, naturally, I over-slept the next morning, which meant that since I had promised to help Phoebe out at the store, I didn’t have time to go for a run. That put me in a bad mood, which probably explained my paranoia. I was convinced that Phoebe didn’t want me around, because no sooner did we reach the store, she gave me a long list of menial errands to run—I was sure it was deliberate on her part—bringing trash to the dump, buying cleaning supplies, hand-delivering a new pair of panty hose to a local customer.
Wherever I went, people stared; I was convinced of that too. It was like they knew I was in touch with TrueBlue, like they knew we were conspiring to rock the boat.
In fact, I hadn’t heard from TrueBlue again. I did hear from Greg, though, a truncated note Blackberried shortly before his helicopter touched down at a base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier. He said that he was cold but energized, that this would be his last e-mail until they cleared the 12,000-foot mark four days from now, weather permitting, and that I should corroborate whatever any informant said—and even that hit me the wrong way. Well, of course, I would check it all out. Did Greg think I was totally naive?
There were more errands to run as the day passed. I mailed bills, fetched lunch, gassed up the van—the last after waiting ten minutes behind the minibus from Road’s End Inn carrying its load of weekenders taking the Peyton Place tour.
Phoebe had her good moments; she did clean up the mess she had made in the office the day before. But in addition to assigning me menial errands, she gave me a few that were absurd. For instance, at one point she sent me with a list of places to go in search of the carpenter who had promised to spend Sunday at the store rebuilding one room’s worth of display shelves. She wanted to confirm that he was coming. Me, I wanted to know why the guy didn’t have a cell phone she could call. Lord knew, most everyone in town seemed to have one.
I never did track him down, which made me think Phoebe had known I wouldn’t—and yes, I was being bitchy. She hadn’t asked for my help; I was the one who had offered it. Did I really expect she would put me in charge of the store? Maybe that was what she was afraid of—that I would try to take over—which was as ridiculous as it got. I was a writer, not a shopkeeper. And I say that with the utmost respect for what Phoebe did. I would have gone out of my mind with the indecision of some of her customers—the black skirt is best—no, the navy one will work better with my shoes—but the black one makes me look slimmer—of course, the beige one will be perfect for September.
Writing was a solitary profession, meaning that I did what I wanted when I wanted to do it. Yes, I had to conform to a publisher’s schedule, but my book was my book. I was in total control of its contents. My modus operandi didn’t involve waiting for someone to decide whether to buy loafers or slides, V-neck or crew neck, wool or cashmere. I had no patience for that. No way would I want the store.
Maybe Sabina had put that bug in her ear.
More paranoia.
And that was Phoebe’s fault. Had she given me chores that involved thinking, I wouldn’t have had time to stew. But what she gave me was busywork, nothing more. Running mindless errands around Middle River? My worst nightmare. Talk about awkward. Not only did people look at me wherever I went, but when we had cause to exchange words, they were guarded.
And then there was my shadow. Someone was following me. I was convinced of it. I can’t tell you how many times I felt a prickly sensation at the back of my neck and looked fast over my shoulder.
There was never anyone there, of course.
But someone had been. I didn’t find out who it was until I visited my mom’s grave the next day. Until then, I was just in a lousy mood, which might be juvenile, but was fact. By the time Saturday night came, I was annoyed enough at Middle River to agree to help TrueBlue with anything his little heart desired.
To: TrueBlue
From: Annie Barnes
Subject: Your offer
You have a point. Where do we go from here?
Chapter 12
MARSHALL GREENWOOD was on edge. He knew that if Annie Barnes was on his case, there could be trouble. One solution was to retire. He was sixty-six and would be doing it soon anyway. As chiefs of police went, he was old. But Middle River wasn’t demanding of him, and he needed the money. Besides, his wife didn’t want him around the house. She hadn’t said it in as many words, but that was the general drift.
Barring retirement, the other obvious solution was to ditch all the pills. If he wasn’t taking anything, he wasn’t an addict. He could simply deny the allegations. Over and done.
He lasted three hours, at which point the pain in his back was so bad and he was so ready to crawl out of his skin, he gave up on that idea. Besides, even if he were able to kick the habit now, the past would be hard to deny. Among his doctor, his HMO, and the drugstore was a paper trail a mile long. No, there had to be another answer.
He spent most of Friday trying to find it. But he had never been good at finding answers. He did things that were obvious. When someone was drunk, Marshall either drove him home or hauled him in to sleep it off. When a car hit a tree, he called the ambulance first and then the tow truck. When a man
beat his wife, he drove the woman to her mother’s house, and if the guy did it again, he called the county sheriff.
The only clues Marshall dealt with were in his crossword puzzles. Friday night, he agonized over one that read “major backup.” The word had six letters, the second an a, the last an n. He went through every possible version of traffic tie-up before squeezing his eyes shut, shaking his head hard, and taking a whole different approach. Bingo. The answer was patron.
Taking that as a message, Marshall picked up the phone early Saturday morning and called Sandy Meade. Sandy was his most respected friend in Middle River. They had gone to school together, and though Marshall was two years behind, they had been teammates in every sport. Sandy was inevitably the star, but Marshall was the better athlete. He made Sandy look good on enough occasions that, by way of reward, he had Sandy’s undying loyalty. Sandy was responsible for his being hired for the security force at the mill years before, and when he won a spot in the Middle River Police Department, Sandy was responsible for that, too.
“Got a minute?” he asked now. He was sitting in the driveway, calling from his car so that Edna wouldn’t hear, but he timed the call well. At this hour on a Saturday morning, Sandy would be out back on the stone patio of that big Birch Street home, reading the newspaper over a third or fourth cup of the strong black coffee his housekeeper kept hot in the carafe.
“Perfect timing,” Sandy said. In the background was the muted rustle of paper, and in the foreground, that Meade voice filled with steel. “You’re the person I want to talk with. Annie Barnes is back. You know that?”
“I do,” Marshall said, delighted that Sandy had raised the subject first.
“Well, Aidan’s in a stew. He thinks she’s here to dredge up old business. You think so?”
The perjury business hadn’t occurred to Marshall. But he was implicated in that, too. “Geez, I hope not. There has to be a statute of limitations on that. What does Lowell say?” Lowell Bunker was Sandy’s attorney.
“He says what you do, that the statute has expired, so there can’t be any prosecution. Personal assassination is something else. She could write that whole thing into a story, just barely disguised.”
“But why would she have to come back here to do that? She knows all the facts.”
“She wants more. She can’t make a book out of that one incident, so she’s back here fishing for dirt.”
“On what?” Marshall asked. He wasn’t stupid; he wasn’t volunteering the business about the pills unless he had to.
“My guess is the mill. She’ll accuse us of all sorts of things, and she won’t be able to prove any of it, but she’ll go on television shooting her mouth off about art mirroring life, and the talk alone can bring the EPA. She’s a dangerous woman. There’s a good reason they’ve always compared her to Grace.”
Marshall fed off Sandy’s strength. “What can I do?” he asked with crusty sternness, just like the stalwart police chief he most often imagined he was. Stalwart—as in “tough as nails”—had been in a puzzle of his not long before. He liked that word a lot.
“Hassle her,” Sandy said. “The way I see it, the sooner we let her know she’s not welcome here, the sooner she’ll leave. If she keeps at it, I have an option or two on my end, but before that, let’s see what you can do.”
Marshall was not a mean person. He saw his job as being reactive rather than proactive—two more good words. But now he had a mandate from Sandy Meade, and Sandy was a man to please.
Finding Annie was easy. The pale green van with Miss Lissy’s logo on the door was nearly as hard to miss as if she had been in the convertible, and with Annie popping in and out of stores, driving from one end of town to the other—Sandy was right, she was definitely fishing—Marshall had her pegged in no time flat.
For a time, he followed her, staying the proper distance behind, but watching every move she made. Given the slightest provocation, he would have pulled her over and given her a ticket. But she stayed within the speed limit, used her blinker at every turn, even stopped for two kids in the crosswalk in the center of town. He thought for sure he would be able to get her when she made a right at the corner of School and Oak; half the town slipped around that corner without coming to a complete stop, as the stop sign dictated. But she did.
Unable to hassle her this way, he tried another tack. It was a more backhanded one (furtive was a more subtle word), but again, given Sandy’s mandate, Marshall felt justified. He became an investigator, visiting those places where she had made stops and fishing for what she was fishing for.
“So,” he said to Jim Howard, the bottle sorter at the town dump, “I saw Annie Barnes here earlier. What’d she have to say?”
“Not much,” said Jim. He was a sad-eyed and silent man, not personable at all, which was why he was a bottle sorter, not a cop, Marshall mused.
“She didn’t ask questions?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t say anything?”
“She said ‘hi.’” He returned to his work.
“Did she talk with anyone else?”
He shook his head. Then he spotted a brown bottle in the midst of the green ones in the large bin, and pulled it out.
“Well, let me know if she does, okay? She’s clever, that one. Thinks if she asks people like you, you’ll tell all for the sake of the glory. She’s writing a book, you know—or trying to.”
Marshall repeated the same line a bit later at the gas station, where he found Normie Zwibble to be just as naive as Jim Howard.
“She’s writing a book?” the mechanic asked in disbelief. “That’s cool.”
Marshall knew admiration when he saw it. Needing to nip it in the bud, he was deliberately cruel. “Not if she writes about an overweight grease monkey who spends half his pay on lottery tickets. Who do you think people will point at?” They would point at Normie, and that would mean trouble. Everyone knew Normie played the lottery—everyone except his parents, who believed gambling was evil and who, moreover, believed that what money Normie didn’t have in his pocket at week’s end had gone into the collection box at church. No matter that Normie was over thirty. He still lived at home, still worked for his daddy, still went to every town dance with his hair slicked back and his face filled with hope.
That face had gone pale. “She wouldn’t do that,” he protested.
“Oh, she would,” Marshall said. “If I were you, I’d steer clear of Annie Barnes. And I’d tell my buddies to do it too,” he tacked on and was immediately pleased with himself. Getting other people to do his dirty work was a brainstorm.
So he tried it on Marylou Walker at News ’n Chews, but only after he bought some almond turtles while waiting for a pair of Peyton Place tourists to leave the shop. Marylou was in her late forties, the second generation of three running the store. “I saw Annie Barnes in here before,” he remarked when he finished the last of his third turtle. “What’d she buy?”
“Chocolate pennies,” Marylou answered with pride. “She’s been in here nearly every day. She says she’s missed our pennies. Washington doesn’t have anything like them.”
“She walked out with more than a bag of pennies.”
“Uh-huh. She bought the newspaper, several postcards, and a map of the town.”
“Postcards? And a map? Why a map?”
“I guess to see what streets are new.”
“I’d say she was doing research,” Marshall advised. “You do know that she’s writing a book. How would you feel about being in it?”
“Why would I be in a book?”
“Because you’re part of a family that has, let’s say, an interesting history.”
Marylou was a minute in following. Then she frowned. “If you’re talking about my cousins, that’s ancient history.”
“It was incest,” Marshall reminded her. “Do you want it revived in a book?”
“No.”
“Then I’d make sure you don’t get too friendly with Annie Barnes. That’
s what writers do, y’know. They sweet-talk you into telling things you wouldn’t normally tell. I’d warn your family, too. Be careful, Marylou. Your parents were around when Peyton Place came out. Ask them. They remember what went on in this town. Grace Metalious did it then. This is Annie Barnes’s chance for revenge.” Seeing that Marylou was listening, he knew he had made his point.
Taking another turtle from his little bag, he left the store, but he was thinking about other people who needed to get the message. Even past the Peyton Placers, there had been kids in the shop. They were all eyes over Annie Barnes. Hadn’t he seen the DuPuis girl several times that day, covering much of the same ground as Annie?
Naturally, when he thought of talking with Kaitlin, she was nowhere in sight. So he headed to Omie’s for a late lunch, and there, just coming out with his wife, was Hal Healy. It was a stroke of luck. Hal was even better. He could reach more people in an hour than Kaitlin DuPuis could in two weeks.
“Got a minute?” Marshall asked. It was his standard opening.
Hal smiled at Pamela. “Wait for me in the car, hon?” He kissed her forehead and watched her walk off.
Marshall watched, too. Pamela was a good-looking woman. He never would have paired her up with a formal guy like Hal. Sour grapes? Maybe. But not because he wanted Pamela himself. The thing was, he remembered when he and Edna had been the way Pamela and Hal were. It was really quite sweet.
“How can I help you?” Hal asked in his quiet, no-nonsense voice.
Marshall refocused. “Annie Barnes. Do you know the name?”
“Of course. She and my Pam were friends back in school.”
“Do you know the whole business about Annie and Grace?”
“Yes. Marsha Klausson told me. I’ve read Peyton Place several times.”
“Then you know what’s inside. Hot stuff, huh?”
Hal grew red. He gave half a shrug, clearly uncomfortable talking about it.
“Yup,” Marshall said, letting him off the hook. “Hot stuff. From what I hear, Annie Barnes is of the same mold, and quite frankly, I’m worried. She’s been all over town. I see the kids looking at her like she’s their newest idol. She could be a bad influence. School isn’t in session for another couple weeks, but you’re already holding faculty meetings. Think you ought to alert the teachers to what’s going on?”
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