Dew Drop Dead (6 page)

“Maybe he's
part
dog,” said Sebastian. “He was a stray, don't forget.” Then, putting his hand to the side of his mouth so as not to offend Chopped Liver, he added in a stage whisper, “We don't know anything about his family background.”

“Oh, Sebastian,” Jessica Hallem said, pulling her lips back in a tight approximation of a smile, “You're such a tease.”

“Well, it's good to see somebody smiling around here.”

Immediately, the smile disappeared. His grandmother's face looked tired, worn-out in a way Sebastian was not used to seeing. She walked back into the living room where Sebastian found her, moments later, sitting in a solitary pool of light, reading or attempting to.

“Where are Mom and Dad?” he asked, balancing a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. All Adam's talk about refreshments at the meeting had left him famished.

“Out.”

Sebastian put the cookies down on an end table.

“Coaster,” his grandmother reminded him.

He reached into a drawer and removed a small straw mat to place under the glass of milk. “Where?” he asked.

“Your father had to attend to something at the station. Then your mother decided—all of a sudden—that her evening manager, who has, I believe, more years' experience in the business than your mother, could no longer handle the restaurant alone.”

“What's going on, Gram?” Sebastian asked. “Mom and Dad hardly tell me anything anymore. And the way they're always getting at each other—it's not like them, you know?”

Jessica tucked a flap of her book between the pages where she'd been reading and thoughtfully took her glasses off and laid them in her lap.

“It isn't that the situation doesn't warrant a certain amount of drama,” she said, “but I do feel your mother and father are laying it on a bit thick these days.” Her cool tone was more that of a critic than a concerned member of the family. “I have told Katie that if Will must relocate for the sake of his work, she has no choice but to sell her restaurant and go with him.”

“To which she said?”

“That I was living in the nineteenth century.”

Sebastian smiled. “Oh, yes,” his grandmother said. “Go ahead, be amused. She thought I was funny, too. ‘Quaint' was the word she used. But I see nothing quaint about peace in the family. What disturbs me more than the situation itself is how your parents are—or perhaps I should say, are
not
—coping with it.”

Hearing the word a second time, Sebastian asked, “What exactly is the situation, Gram? Do you think Dad's going to lose his job?”

Jessica sighed heavily and clucked her tongue. “I am an avid reader of the Bible and the
Wall Street Journal,”
she replied obliquely. “I can't help thinking it would take a miracle such as the ones recorded in the former to help reverse some of the trends reflected in the latter. Sebastian, the hand of the mighty corporation is upon little WEB-FM and has the force, I fear, of a tidal wave. I do not imagine Will Barth will remain standing in its wake.”

“In other words—”

“In other words, it seems almost certain that Herself is selling the station. And despite assurances from the prospective buyer, I have read too often that when this kind of takeover occurs, it is only a matter of months, sometimes weeks, until new management is in place. And old management, meaning your father, is not even given a gold watch for its trouble. A curt thank-you and ‘here's your hat' are more like it.”

It was Sebastian's turn to sigh. He had lived his whole life in Pembroke. He hated the idea of moving. Especially now, what with Corrie and all.

“I'm sorry, Sebastian,” Jessica said. “It really isn't fair for you to have to bear the burden of all this.”

“Sure it is,” Sebastian answered. “It's my family. And I already lost my radio show because of ‘all this,' didn't I? Besides, I'm not five years old anymore.”

His grandmother's smile was softer, a truer one this time. “No,” she said, “you're not. Much as it amazes me at times, you are no longer a child.”

Their second cat, a black one named Boo, entered the room and, seeing that Sebastian was home, promptly claimed his lap.

“And how was the meeting at the church?” Jessica asked.

Sebastian gave his grandmother a detailed description of the program Rev. Wingate had set up, along with the youth group's part in it.

“I am glad for your sake,” she said when he
stopped to take a breath, “that you're involved in something you find worthwhile. Personally, I can't see that a handout does these people much good.”

“But if they're hungry—”

“They should find work.”

“And if there isn't work?”

Jessica Hallem waved her hand in the air. Sebastian sensed that their conversation was drawing to a close. “Fiddle-faddle,” she said. “There is
always
work for those who want it.”

“Even Dad?” Sebastian asked.

“Absolutely,” said his grandmother in a no-nonsense tone. “My goodness, Sebastian, don't compare your father with ...”

She did not complete her sentence, for which Sebastian was grateful. As she picked up her book and resumed reading, he bit into a chocolate pecan cookie his grandmother had baked earlier that day and wondered if she had been hungry even once in her life.

ON SATURDAY MORNING
, when the world was still dark, Corrie woke to the sounds of tires crunching gravel and a motor cutting off. She wrapped a blanket around her and crossed to the window overlooking the driveway to see who was there. By the outdoor lamp, which apparently had been left on all night, she made out her father emerging from the church van, stretching his large frame so that it seemed like a giant's, then dropping his arms and looking amazingly small. Corrie glanced at the clock glowing on her night table.

5:52

Where in the world had he been?

“Good morning, Peaches,” said Junior Wingate, surprised to find his younger daughter standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him. “What are you doing up so early?”

“What are
you?”

“I haven't been to bed.”

“What's wrong?” Corrie asked in alarm.

“Sshh. Let's not wake the house. Come to the kitchen. I'll explain while I make some coffee and try
to get warm. Just walking from the car, I'm chilled to the bone.”

As the coffee percolated—a sound Corrie loved because she associated it with those rare and quiet mornings when she sat with her father and they talked about things that mattered—Reverend Wingate spread his hands out on the Formica tabletop and told his daughter all that he had done and seen that night.

“I had no idea,” he began, “how many people there are living in boxes and sheds and newspaper cocoons.” His usually melodious tones were tempered by sleeplessness, his range flattened, his voice raw. But at the core of his words there burned a passion that flared up from time to time, much as the last ember flares in a dying fire, fighting extinction, sending some small heat into a cold and sleepy world.

“I couldn't wait for the needy to come to us,” he said. “When I heard how bitter it was going to be last night, I gathered up all the sweaters and coats and winter gear you kids had sorted out and called a couple of the regulars to meet me at the church at eleven.” “Regulars” was how Corrie's father referred to the handful of congregants who could be counted on to say yes, no matter what the question. “We made sandwiches and packed them along with the clothes. And then we headed out looking for people to give them to.”

He stopped speaking for a moment and rubbed his hands. “We didn't see anyone at first. After close
to an hour, I began to wonder if I'd exaggerated this thing way out of proportion. After all, this isn't New York City or even Troy. Did I really think there were people sleeping on park benches in pretty little Pembroke? I entertained the notion that I'd invented the plight of the needy as a way to be needed. And then I noticed something we'd probably passed right by a half-dozen times before. A pair of feet in mismatched shoes were sticking out of the end of a packing carton. I understood then that we needed to be looking with different eyes.

“We covered as much ground as we could and found twenty-three people in all. One family, Corrie—five people—live in a car on a dirt road off Route Seven. There were children huddled and shivering under a greasy blanket in the backseat. I gave them sweaters and mittens and hats. And they just stared at me, as if they had no idea what I was doing there. Or what they were doing there.”

Junior Wingate fell silent, his eyes no longer looking at his daughter. They seemed to be staring through the walls at the wind that rattled the windows, and they grew hard, as if it were not the wind they were seeing but an enemy, lurking.

Corrie got up and poured him a cup of coffee.

He took the cup and closed his hands around it. “I told every one of the people we found that there was a place for them at the church,” he said.

“How long can they stay there?” Corrie asked.

“As long as they need to. It's a temporary solution at best, Corrie. What they need is a permanent shelter. And we'll work on that. But we can't wait for all the pieces to be in place. We have to do the best we can with what we have. Maybe I'm a fool, but right now I can't worry about next week or the week after that. Winter is no longer coming; it is here.”

Corrie looked at her father as he blew steam from his cup of coffee. His round face with its red cheeks and glasses forever slipping down his nose gave him the appearance of an overgrown kid. She knew that some people had trouble taking him seriously, that they called him an idealist and told him teasingly—even though they weren't teasing—that he should grow up.

Was he a fool? she wondered.

He noticed her watching him. “A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

She waited until her thoughts found words before answering. “I was just thinking,” she told him, “that it's lucky for the world there are fools in it.”

DOWN THE STREET
, Josh Lepinsky was making breakfast and, for the first time in weeks, whistling.

Sebastian, who finished his paper route a little after seven each morning and frequently joined his across-the-street neighbors for breakfast, heard Josh's unique blend of bluejay and blues as he dropped his bike against the back gate and hurried to the kitchen door.

“You're in a good mood,” Sebastian observed, closing the door behind him and stamping his feet to warm them. The numbness in his toes turned prickly.

“That I am,” said Josh. He handed Sebastian a mug of steaming hot chocolate.

Sebastian nodded his thanks. “How come?”

“Sit, sit,” Josh said. “I'm concocting something out of a cookbook. At the rate I'm going, you may be eating your breakfast for lunch.”

“I'm too cold to sit. So?”

“So?”

“So how come you're in such a good mood?”

“Ah, well. On the one hand, no more writer's block. Flinch is on the case again!”

“And on the other hand?”

“Pimento, pimento,” Josh mumbled, his index finger resting on the open page of the cookbook. “Where am I going to find pimento at seven in the morning? Quick, Sebastian, what can I substitute?”

“I'm not sure what pimento is.”

“I could use a fresh red pepper, I suppose. The question is, do I have any fresh red peppers?” He crossed to the refrigerator and, while searching its nether regions, told Sebastian, “I sent Flinch on vacation. Got him out of New York City. He's staying in a little Connecticut town, not unlike Pembroke, in an inn named, not so coincidentally, the Dew Drop Inn.”

“Can you do that?” Sebastian asked. “Use the same name?”

“There's no copyright protection for names. Besides, the Dew Drop Inn is so common a name it's almost a cliche. So. One evening, Flinch agrees to a game of paddle tennis—”

“Paddle tennis?”

“In life, it's Ping-Pong. In certain kinds of mysteries, it's paddle tennis. Anyway, he agrees to a game the following morning with a gentleman staying in the next room. But when the gentleman is late for breakfast, lo and behold, it is discovered—”

“That the gentleman has been murdered.”

“Dead in his bed. Soon all the guests are dropping like flies, and Flinch must solve the murders before he becomes the next victim. Ah-ha, pimentos!”

Josh stood, a look of triumph in his eyes and a bottle of pimentos in his hand. “It's a change of pace, don't you think? I was getting a little tired of Flinch the hard-nosed cop shooting it out with drug dealers and hurling himself out of moving subway cars. Besides, this one is
funny.”

“I thought all your books were funny, Josh,” said Sebastian.

Josh scowled for a fleeting second or two. “Well,” he said, “yes. But this one is meant to be. Whoa! These pimentos smell like somebody's been wearing them for socks. Will you look at this? ‘Use by August 31, 1982.'”

“The Case of the Putrid Pimentos,”
said Sebastian, feeling his nasal passages tighten. “So what's the other reason you're in such a good mood? On the one hand, no more writer's block. On the other hand—”

Two voices sang out as one: “Rebecca Quinn!”

Sebastian turned to see David and Rachel standing in the doorway.

“Ah, the angel choir,” said Josh. “Guess what we're having for breakfast this morning, children.”

David sniffed the air. “Cholera?” he ventured.

“Pancakes,” Josh said over the roar of the garbage disposal. “Grab your coats. By the time we get back, the air should be fit to breathe again. You coming, Sebastian?”

“Sure,” said Sebastian. “We're supposed to be at the church by nine-thirty, though.”