Dew Drop Dead (7 page)

“I don't see a problem there,” Josh said. “Just don't anybody get fancy with their orders. No pancakes with pimentos.”

“Or anchovies,” Rachel said, taking her jacket from the coat tree in the hall.

“Or anchovies,” Josh echoed as the disposal's roar quieted to a satisfied rumble. Just before switching it off, he swore he heard it burp.

THE MAN
in the far corner of the room called himself Abraham. That was all he said or cared to say. “I am Abraham.”

He wouldn't take food or rest himself on any of the cots that in the course of a few hours had transformed the normally still and empty basement social hall of First Church into a bustling dormitory for the dispossessed. For over an hour, he had stood there, rigid as a statue, clutching the bag he'd brought with him.

As Corrie ladled out the soup Sebastian's mother had donated, she chatted congenially with the people in line. Sebastian saw a side of her he'd never seen before, how at ease she was in circumstances that made him tense and uncertain. He glanced across the room to where the Reverend Wingate was inviting the homeless in as if they were old friends come to visit, and the thought occurred to him that Corrie was indeed her father's daughter.

A woman named Estelle Barker brought Sebastian's attention back to the task at hand. “You got nothin' but tuna?” she asked in a loud and demanding voice.

“Sorry?”

“Tuna. You got nothin' but tuna?” Estelle Barker barked. And when he didn't answer, she said, “My boy here can't eat tuna. Makes him sick to the stomach. You got baloney?”

“Uh, no, I don't think so,” Sebastian said. “Wait a minute.”

“It's always the same,” said Estelle Barker, gingerly lifting a slice of bread to inspect what lay beneath. “Everything is wait a minute, wait a minute, wait. Well, I got nothin' better to do. My life is on hold, anyway. What do I care?”

Sebastian entered the kitchen where his mother was supervising David and Harley in sandwich making. “I overheard,” David said to his friend. “Gee, I guess beggars
can
be choosers.”

“Now, David,” said Katie, “the woman's got a right to food that doesn't make her son sick.”

“But Mom,” Sebastian said, “baloney?”

Katie shrugged. “To each her own. Why don't you take this plate of peanut butter and jelly? And there are some apples in that bowl we forgot to put out earlier.”

“I'm surprised how many people showed up,” Sebastian said, balancing the plate with one hand while he reached for the bowl with the other.

“Me, too,” said David. “I hope we have enough sandwiches.”

Harley laughed. “You guys crack me up,” he said. “This isn't a party, y'know. We could stay here the rest of our lives making sandwiches, and there'd never be enough. You guys don't know nothing.”

From the other room, Estelle Barker shouted, “That boy on a coffee break er what?”

Sebastian wondered for a fleeting moment if his grandmother had been right about “these people,” but as he pushed open the door and caught sight of Estelle Barker's two young children pressed against her torn coat, he knew it was not his grandmother but Harley who had his finger on the truth.

“There you are! Now don't tell me you didn't find no baloney!”

Sebastian approached, his arms full of food but his words empty of salvation. “All we have is peanut butter and jelly,” he said. “And some apples. There's soup—”

“Soup! Peanut butter!” Estelle Barker shook her head angrily. “My boy here, he got a sensitive stomach. He need his baloney.”

Sebastian was wishing Corrie were there to help him out of what was threatening to turn into an embarrassing scene when suddenly an even greater commotion broke out elsewhere. He turned to see Corrie standing frozen in the center of the room. All eyes were on her, but it was the eyes of the man called Abraham that held her riveted to the spot.

The man's arms were twisted around the grease-stained shopping bag he clutched to his chest. His face was twisted, too, and out of his mouth came a torrent of twisted words—words that made no sense, a rush of babble spewed like lava, hot and suffocating.

“Don't you want something to eat?” Corrie asked. Sebastian saw now that she held a plate of food in her hands.

The man's cries were like something you might hear in the zoo, a caged animal suddenly remembering what it was to be wild. The look in his eyes as he stared unblinkingly at Corrie was so intense and so personal it made Sebastian want to look away, but he couldn't. He was spellbound.

Corrie held her ground. “No one's going to hurt you,” she said in a gentle, unwavering voice. “I just thought you'd like to eat something. You look hungry.”

The man's ranting came to an abrupt halt. He stood stock-still, his eyes narrowing to slits as he studied Corrie. After a moment, he loosened his hold on the bag. “I am Abraham,” he growled.

It seemed to Sebastian as if the man were serving notice of some kind. But Corrie took it differently—or chose to, in any case. “I am Corrie,” she said. “And I have food for you. Would you like it?”

“No.”

“No, you don't want any food?”

“No, you are not Corrie.”

No one spoke then, no one moved. The room itself seemed to hold its breath. Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian noticed Corrie's father. The minister watched his daughter intently, yet he kept his distance. Suddenly, Estelle Barker's sharp voice cut through the tension like a knife.

“I'll take them peanut butter sandwiches,” she said. “Maybe you have baloney another day.”

Someone laughed at this, and Sebastian woke as if out of a dream. He gave Estelle Barker all the sandwiches she wanted. When he turned back a few minutes later, he saw that Corrie and the man called Abraham were seated on facing cots. It was the man who held the plate of food now, and he was eating.

SEVEN PEOPLE
slept in the basement of First Church that night: Estelle Barker and her two children, a soft-spoken man named Raymond Elveri, a woman with badly swollen feet who would not give her name, a teenager named Marcus who said he was on the run from a messed-up life, and the man called Abraham.

Having spent the entire day and the early evening at the church, Corrie arrived at Sebastian's house after dinner with a glow that was part elation, part exhaustion. It was the look of an athlete who has played hard and with determination; and in that context, it was a look Sebastian was used to seeing on Corrie's face. He knew that she had given her all to this day, as much or more than she had given to any game of football she'd ever played or any race she'd ever run.

He brought her into the sun room, where David was sprawled on a large floor pillow, studying the Scrabble tiles he'd just drawn.

“Is ‘gluck' a word?” he asked without looking up.

“I doubt it,” said Sebastian.

“No, I think it is,” David said.

“Clue number one when you're playing with David,” said Sebastian. “He gets that look on his face when he's lying.”

“No, really. Gluck is the sound the lock on a suitcase makes.” David mimed pressing a lock down with his thumb. “Gluck.”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “Wrong, Lepinsky, gluck is the sound made by a hen with a speech defect.”

“Gluck,” said Corrie, getting into the swing of things, “is how an Australian says, ‘Good luck'—‘G'luck, mate.'”

Sebastian laughed and patted Corrie on the shoulder. “Excellent,” he said. “Want some popcorn?”

Corrie shook her head.

“Glucose!” David cried, placing his tiles triumphantly on the board. He quickly added up his score and said, “You're dying here, Barth.” Sebastian and David never called each other by their last names except when playing Scrabble.

Sebastian studied the score pad: 127 to 49. “You have an unfair advantage over me,” he told his friend.

“I'd call being smart and well read an advantage but not unfair,” David said.

“What I had in mind was that you play with Josh and he's a whiz at words.”

“This is true,” said David. Then, looking over
the top of the wicker coffee table, he said, “Earth to Corrie.”

Corrie had lowered herself to the floor and was leaning against the love seat, one hand absently petting the cat—she hadn't bothered to notice which one—who was rubbing against her legs. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about Abraham.”

“What about him?” Sebastian asked, looking at his letters and wondering if there were any words in the English language that had no vowels.

“Oh, I was trying to figure him out, I guess. He wouldn't talk to anyone but me—I don't know why—and we talked for a long time, but I had trouble understanding what he was saying. My father says he's sick.”

David grunted. “He's a psycho. Even I had that much figured out.”

Ordinarily, Corrie would have given David a hard time for being so callous, but she couldn't argue with what he was saying. “I know. He is . . . different.” David grunted again. “But I like him. He . . . Did I tell you what he calls me?”

“Let me guess,” David said. “Saint Corrie of the Hot Lunch?”

“What?” Sebastian asked, begrudgingly putting C-A-T on the board and bringing his score up to an impressive fifty-two.

“Catherine the First. Isn't that weird? I don't
know why. I kept telling him my name was Corrie, but he said, ‘No, you are Catherine the First.'”

“Was she a queen or something?” Sebastian asked.

“I think there was a Catherine the Great,” said David. “I don't know if there was a Catherine the First.”

“I asked him if he had any family. He wouldn't answer. Then he said something about someone named Isaac. I said, ‘Who's Isaac?' And he said, ‘I am Isaac.' So I said, ‘I thought your name was Abraham.' And he said, ‘I am Isaac, I am Abraham.' See what I mean? Confusing.”

“Sure,” said David. “Stick with him and your brain will turn to cream cheese. Speaking of which, where are the refreshments—as Adam Wells would say?”

Sebastian shoved the bowl of popcorn across the rug. Boo lifted his head, jumped off Corrie's lap, and made a beeline for it.

“Yuck,” David said. “Cat hairs in the popcorn. What else do you have?”

Later, during another round of Scrabble that included Corrie and two pints of ice cream, Sebastian asked if anyone wanted to go to the movies the next day.

“Sure,” Corrie said.

“Maybe,” said David. “I have something to do first.”

“What?” Sebastian asked.

“Oh, just something.”

Sebastian gave David a puzzled look. “What are you up to?” he asked.

David smiled and said, “You'll see.” Then he laid his tiles out on the board. The letters read M-Y-S-T-E-R-Y.

“Triple word,” said David. “That's forty-five points for the twelve-year-old. All
right!”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON
, Sebastian and Corrie emerged from the pitch-blackness of the Pembroke Cineplex into the blinding light of day, their senses benumbed by relentless Dolby stereo and ninety-seven minutes in the company of screeching aliens with bad teeth. Corrie shrieked as a figure lunged out of the sunlight at them, then laughed when she saw it was only David.

“Get your bikes,” David commanded. “I found something.”

Sebastian, his mind still in a far-off galaxy, regarded his friend blankly as if he'd wandered in from another movie.

“I found something,” David repeated.

“Where?” Corrie asked.

“The inn.”

“What?” said Sebastian.

“Blood. Get your bikes.”

“BLOOD
? That's no blood!”

Sebastian and David were kneeling by a large rock about ten yards from the dining room window of the Dew Drop Inn. Corrie, hearing that the case of the disappearing body had been reopened, had elected to stay home. Sebastian was wondering if he shouldn't have done the same.

“What do you call it if it's not blood?” David asked indignantly.

Sebastian studied the spot on the rock's surface. “I call it a brown stain,” he said. “It could be anything. It could be geological, for Pete's sake.”

“What about this?” David said, pointing to a nearby clump of field grass caked with the same, or similar, brown substance.

“Like I said, it could be anything. I mean,
anything,
David. I wouldn't touch it if I were you.”

David looked at his friend's face, then back at the inn. He felt his cheeks burn. “How come,” he said after a moment's heavy silence, “when you get a hunch and follow it, it always leads to some brilliant discovery?
But when I do the same thing, I end up feeling stupid.”

“I didn't say you were stupid.”

“You didn't have to. You're probably right anyway. It isn't blood. It's dog doodoo. And so's my case.” He stood and walked a couple of feet away, staring at the dining room window.

“Listen,” Sebastian said, “I believe as much as you do that there was a body on that bed.”

David turned around. “Then why aren't you doing something about it?”

“Because, for once, I don't know what to do. We looked out here the other day and didn't find anything.”

“We could break into the inn again.”

“Wrong.”

“I know.”

“Besides,” said Sebastian, “even though I told you the police weren't looking to find evidence of a murder, they
did
search the inn. You know Alex. If there was something to be found, he would have found it.” Anticipating what David was about to say, he quickly added, “Maybe they didn't search out here, but we did.”

“Yeah, and maybe we didn't search hard enough. That's why I came back. You got me thinking the other day, Sebastian. I think you're right. I
know
you are.”