“I know, I know,” Cindy replied. “But I was ashamed.”
“Well, you shouldn’t’ve been,” said Sarah, again. Like always.
“Anyway,” Cindy continued. “One night he hit Maylene. I jumped on him and beat him off. That’s the night he almost killed me. When I come to, Maylene was cryin’ all over me. She’d been beat, too. Imagine that, beating a child like Maylene!”
Albert couldn’t imagine beating a rug. He thought of one-legged Jeremy Ash, absorbing whatever of the world managed to sift through the crack in the hatch of his little prison under the stairs. What was wrong with people, anyway? How many helpless human beings were stashed under stairways, in closets, and back yard shacks across the country – round the world – terrified at the prospect of their next encounter with the human race?
“He’d gone off downtown to do his drinkin’, so I tore that trailer apart bit by bit, ‘til I found where he kept his money; in a plastic bag in the toilet tank! So I counted out my four-hundred and eighty three dollars, but there wasn’t no change – wasn’t any change – so I took another dollar, but I mailed him the twenty-four cents soon as I had it.”
“So, you came back here?” Heather concluded, as the story ebbed on the conversational shore.
Cindy nodded. “We went down to the bus stop at the foot of the mountain. There’s a phone booth there. I called Sarah, and she came and got us.
“I started back at Rudy’s the next Monday and been there ever since.”
“What about Jimbo?” said Heather. “Why did he come to get you now, after all this time?”
“He wants his money, I expect.” Cindy replied. “Who knows? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since that night. I was panicked the first month or two, I swear. Every time the doorbell would ring at Rudy’s . . . or the phone, or someone would come knockin’ on the door at Sarah’s, I’d half jump clear of my skin.
“I hate to think what it’s done to poor Maylene.”
“Maylene?” said Heather. “She didn’t see him, did she?”
“No, but she heard his name,” said Cindy. “I guess that was enough.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She run upstairs and hid in the Professor’s closet,” Cindy replied, wide-eyed. “Didn’t she, Professor?”
She had. It took ten minutes to find her, and another five minutes to convince her Jimbo wasn’t there. Albert was relieved when she didn’t emerge with a bag of cigarettes under each arm.
“Well, the poor creature,” said Heather. “She’s alright now, though?”
“Oh, fine,” said Cindy. As she stood up, she unfolded the apron she’d been holding in her hand, shook it loose, and tied it around her waist. “She’ll forget it someday,” she said.
“And . . . you’re okay?”
Cindy’s hand went reflexively to her cheek. “Oh, that’s nothing. I hardly noticed.” She cast a wary glance up and down the street. “I’d best be headin’ on, Joey’s all alone ‘til seven-thirty.” She said good-bye and left.
Heather and Albert watched after her. “Amazing girl,” said Heather.
True. Albert nodded.
“She’s been through an awful lot for someone so young.”
Albert continued nodding. He’d never noticed that Cindy had a way of walking that was a little swingy, and a little, well, there wasn’t a word for it, as far as he knew, but that’s what it was. And a lot of it. He cleared his throat for no particular reason.
For a moment, he heard the faint strains of a pop tune in the cloistered reaches of his mind. Someone in his brain had broken the vow of silence. Pop? He listened harder. Drums, bass, guitars . . . saxophone. No doubt. Odd. Albert had never thought in pop. He couldn’t help notice, though, that the rhythm was perfectly in synch with whatever it was about Cindy there was no word for. Classical music had no rhythm like that. “Yes,” he said. The word tumbled around his subconsciousness, then wandered off to find someone to play with.
“Well, what have we here?” Heather’s voice fetched Albert from shadowy borderlands of himself he’d never visited. She was leaning forward, to see past him, and staring at something up the street. Albert followed with his eyes.
Beverly Call ran the town’s only taxi, a lime green Dodge Caravan, which was drifting to a stop in front of the DuShane house. A small, thin woman emerged from the cab and stood on the sidewalk, surveying the neighborhood as Beverly retrieved luggage from the rear of the van. They were talking, but Albert couldn’t make out the words.
“My goodness!” said Heather, standing. “It’s Maudanne!”
Chapter Fourteen
“Well, looks like I won’t be able to make a career out of that job,” said Standish. At Sarah’s urging, he’d moved into the attic room, over Albert’s, the night before. He and Albert were sitting on a little screened porch at the back of the house while Standish had a cigarette. He thoughtlessly removed it from the pack and placed it between his lips. Then he lit it. The sulphur of the match and the tobacco’s deadly jinn performed a seductive tango at nose level.
There was no justice in the universe.
Albert had never thought to ask if he could smoke outside. He’d just assumed, well, he’d just assumed. Now, it was too late. He’d told Sarah he didn’t smoke.
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave.’ Albert remembered that from somewhere.Charlotte’s Web, probably.
He watched fragrant wraiths chase one another up Standish’s nostrils as he and the cigarette killed each other. He gulped loudly and closed his eyes as if in supplication. It was nearly time for a ride up the hill. “Job?” he said weakly.
Standish’s mind drifted to other things as he studied the DuShane house. “Lit up like a birthday cake,” he observed. Albert looked; it was. Every light in the house was on, and the sounds of a baseball broadcast emanated from the open windows. Now and then Maudanne’s silhouette, what there was of it, would flit across one of the palettes of light as she chased the residue of spring from the rooms with a vigor that threatened to put even memories to flight. “He has a lot to celebrate.”
Albert remembered hearing once that a policeman could come along and take your car, if he needed it. Just like that. There was a word for it, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Just like that. And there was nothing you could do. The analogy came to Albert as he was trying to divide his attention between Standish’s cigarette and DuShane’s house. There wasn’t enough of him to go around. The cigarette smoke had done to his attention what a policeman could do to a car or, in Albert’s case, a moped. After a few puffs, Standish crushed the life out of the cigarette and ground its stinking remains into the abalone ashtray.
The spell was broken. “You mean DuShane,” said Albert. He blinked a couple of times as his attention reassembled itself and came to rest upon the topic.
Standish muttered in the affirmative. “You were right.”
That seemed unlikely. “About what?”
“DuShane’s innocence.”
You could look at it that way.
“Maudanne swears he couldn’t have got out without her seeing him. The question is,” Standish continued, “if DuShane’s not guilty, who is?”
That’s the part Albert hated. Why couldn’t everybody just be innocent, like he was? “Why don’t you find out?”
“Me?”
“You’re a detective,” Albert reminded. “That’s what you do.”
“Well, yes. But . . . “
“I’ll hire you,” said Albert without thinking. “Keep hiring you,” he revised.
“Why?”
Why indeed. Albert shrugged. He wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure,” he said. “You’re here anyway. You’re a detective. The police can probably use the help.”
Standish laughed a single laugh. “The police don’t generally invite my help,” he said.
“They don’t?”
“I used to be one – a policeman. Lousy job,” he said. “You feel like you’re going around in legal handcuffs.
It’s almost against the law to arrest a criminal.”
Albert’s expression, speaking for his brain, didn’t comprehend. Standish clarified. “Cops are asked to do an impossible job,” he said, “because the crooks have more rights than they do.
“There was this time I was staked out . . . ” he lowered his head. “Never mind. I’m not going to dig that all up again. Let’s just say, I didn’t have the patience to be a policeman,” he said. “I like a little more freedom than a strict interpretation of the law allows.”
“So, you’ll do it?” Albert deduced.
Standish thought quietly for a moment. “Sure. Why not?” he said. “The media seems to have given up on Tryon, as far as you’re concerned . . . ‘til they find out you’re not in Atlanta, anyway. Sure,” he repeated, as if the first ‘sure’ was just a trial balloon. “Why not? Do you have any ideas?”
Albert had had quite a few ideas lately, and some threatened to get the best of him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, your intuition was right about who didn’t kill the Judge. I thought maybe it could drop a few hints about who did.”
Now Albert knew why he’d hired Standish to find the murderer, because if he was thinking about it, Albert wouldn’t have to. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to think about it. You do that.” He looked at his wrist as if there was a watch there and got up. “I have to give Maylene her piano lesson.”
“Before you go,” said Standish, removing another cigarette from the pack. He handed it to Albert.
“Oh. I don’t! I mean . . . “ said Albert, flustered.
“You must not think I’m much of a detective,” Standish said calmly. “Go on. I won’t tell.”
Albert took the cigarette and put it in his lips. He had to hold it to keep it from shaking as Standish struck a match and held in near the end of the cigarette, then hesitated. “You’re not really trying to quit, are you?” he said sideways.
Heaven forbid. “Oh no!” said Albert. If ever there was anything he wanted to make crystal clear, this was it. “No!”
“Good,” said Standish, lighting the cigarette, “I’d hate to be the cause of your backsliding.”
It was not an enjoyable cigarette.
Albert had felt the same when Ingrid Wichenbach talked him into stealing a brownie at a church dinner once when he was six. It had turned to ashes in the mouth, and gall in his throat where it wedged in the pea-sized constriction his nerves had created. The same nerves afflicted him now, only they had grown up and taken to tap-dancing, which black art they practiced on his heart whenever a door or window opened or closed anywhere within hearing.
Albert had very good ears.
“There’s still that problem about the Judge’s chair,” said Standish. “Heather showed me the room.”
“He’d see anyone who came into the room,” said Albert. He dropped the cigarette on the concrete floor and ground it out.
Standish crooked his lips. “I don’t see how to get around that one,” he said. “The only thing I can figure is that it must have been someone he knew. They were talking. The murderer comes up beside him casually and . . . ” He was going through the motions unconsciously, “then . . . ” A swift downward thrust of the dagger hand. “And leave the knife to incriminate DuShane.”
“The Judge always locked his door,” Albert reminded again.
“Well,” Standish replied a little sharply. “Like I said before, he didn’t lock it that time. You have to face facts, Professor.”
Facts were changelings, thought Albert. Just when you thought you had a baby, it turned out to be a troll. He didn’t voice this opinion. “If the Judge had seen the knife coming, he would have dropped the pen.”
“What?” said Standish, unexpectedly turning a corner and finding himself face to face with another fact. “Pen?”
“The Judge was stabbed in the chest. If someone had been standing beside him, he would have seen the knife coming,” said Albert. “He would have dropped the pen he was writing with.”
When Standish’s eyes came to rest on Albert, they were perplexed. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said slowly.
Albert agreed. “No.”
“Still,” said Standish. “The question is: who killed him?”
Albert didn’t think so. “The question is how,” he suggested. He stepped on the cigarette butt one more time for good measure. “I’m going to give Maylene her piano lesson.”
Standish was left in the dark. “How?”
There were lots of places to smoke if you were mobile, which Albert now was, thanks to Agnes, and he found most of them, such as the abandoned textile factory on the edge of town. In the process, he and the town became familiar with one another. Albert liked Tryon, and Tryon liked him. In fact, people began to regard him as a sort of mascot. They’d call to him and wave as he puttered from one end of town to the other on his moped with his sparkly helmet.
The kids called him ‘Professor Flash,’ a name the newspaper adopted when referring to him, which it did now and again in humorous editorials on days when there weren’t enough flea markets or church dinners.
Albert had returned from one such sortie and was propping Agnes against the wall of Rudy’s Restaurant to rest from her labors, when a commotion drew his attention to the opposite end of the sidewalk. He scarcely had time to focus on the individual bearing down on him at a dead run, eyes wide, nostrils flared, filled with panic. It was Tanjore Trelawney.
“Hello,” said Albert. He raised his hand in greeting, but before he could get his fingers fully extended he had become, in relation to Trelawney, a thing of the distant past. Nevertheless, Albert stood waving, like Tin Man. He hadn’t the necessary facilities to arrest himself in mid-action.
A heartbeat later he heard loud footfalls behind him. Performing an about face that would have done the Commander credit, he found himself directly in the path of Matt Harvey. He, too, was running for all he was worth, but his eyes were filled more with grim determination than stark terror. This time Albert didn’t wave, he just said “Hello,” by which time ‘good-bye’ would have been more appropriate.
Trelawney had crossed the street and ducked between two buildings and was already halfway up the hill behind them, with Matt Harvey nipping at his heels. At the top of the hill, Albert could see what Trelawney could not: a police car cresting the slope and coming to a stop. A uniformed officer got out each side and, scurrying down among the trees, knelt and waited.
By this time, several of Rudy’s regulars bookended Albert in the grandstand and were pointing and jabbering loudly and talking as if they knew exactly what was happening and why.
“Trelawney,” said a short, skinny man with sparse red hair and a scraggly beard. “They had to get around to him sooner or later.”
“Why?” said Albert. It was an all-encompassing question. Any answer would do.
“Back when the Judge put him in prison, Tanjore threatened he’d kill him once he was out.” Clarence, holding a plate of blackberry cobbler, was speaking between mouthfuls.
“Stupid thing to say,” said the redhead. Albert was trying to remember what Cindy called him. Slinky? Heathcliff?
“Well, he was only a boy at the time,” Clarence said in his defense. “Most folks thought seven years was a little steep.”
“He had it comin’,” said the redhead.
Wilber? Martin?
“He was nothing but trouble from day one . . . and the town ain’t missed him that much.” He snapped his fingers.
Hubert! No. Not Hubert.
“What do you know about it, Casper?” said Clarence. “You were living in Pickens back then.”
“Casper!” said Albert aloud. He’d never have thought of that. Everyone looked at him. “Never mind,” he said self-consciously. “I thought I . . . ” his mouth was moving as if in hope some words would come out. None did. “Never mind,” he repeated, and turned his eyes to the top of the hill.
“I keep my ears open,” said Casper
, formerly Hubert, by way of explanation. “Makes sense he done it. I ‘spect he was stewin’ on it them seven years.”
The capture went as scripted. Mike Harvey drove Trelawney straight into the arms of the waiting policemen, who bounced out of the bushes like boogiemen. He struggled for a second or two, then it was over. His hands were wrestled behind him and handcuffed. They hustled him into the back seat of the patrol car, which backed away from the crest of the hill and out of sight.
“Well, that’s all she wrote,” someone observed. Everyone mumbled agreement and, by ones and twos, returned to their business – excepting Clarence, who hadn’t finished his pie yet – and Albert.
“They think he killed the Judge?”
“Seems likely,” said Clarence. “He shouldn’t never have said such a thing as that, especially in court, with all them witnesses. Fool thing to do. It’s right there in the minutes.”
“Boys say foolish things,” said Albert, reminded of some things boys had said to him when he was a kid. Girls were even worse.
“They do,” Clarence agreed as he licked his plate. Cindy wouldn’t have let him do that inside. There was something to be said for alfresco dining. He felt a little continental. “But, with Marchant off the hook, Tanjore’s a good bet. They can’t just do nothin’.”
Albert failed to see the advantage of doing something wrong over doing nothing at all. The thought was punctuated by the wail of a siren that preceded the patrol car through main street. Tanjore was in the back with one of the officers. Matt Harvey and the other officer were in front.
Tanjore had visited Albert’s smoking aerie several times over the weeks. He hadn’t talked much. Neither did Albert. Their conversation consisted of random, well-selected comments mortared by thoughtful silence and the sounds of life going on around them. He liked Tanjore.
Maybe Standish would have a career after all.
Chapter Fifteen
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Harvey,” said Albert.
“Sure thing, Professor,” said the girl behind the desk. He’d never seen her before, but she knew who he was. Like everyone else. She had a pleasant smile and shining eyes, and was probably pretty beneath the layers of makeup. It was hard to tell. Albert had to wear makeup once for an elementary school skit in which he played a bench. He broke out in blotches. Maybe women did, too. Maybe they had to heap on more makeup to cover the blotches. That would explain it.
Dead in D Minor Page 16
