New World Monkeys (25 page)

“So it drowned?”

“Or someone drowned it.” The exterminator looks up the landing. “When did you say you came to town? Three weeks ago?”

Duncan resists scratching his head furiously. “Three or four. Why?”

“Your wasp infestation started way before that. Long time before you opened up the house.”

“Right.” He rakes his hair out from his collar.

“You got another bathroom down here, don’t you?”

Duncan finds himself nodding, caught by those circular imprints. “Just down the hall.” But as he says the words he remembers the main-floor bathroom also faces the backyard. Had Lily closed those blinds? “Hold on, my wife was getting ready in there. Let me check if it’s decent.”

The exterminator scribbles something on his clipboard, doesn’t look up. “No, I’m saying to keep the upstairs one sealed for twenty-four hours. I fogged it again after getting out the nest.”

“Oh,” Duncan says, with transparent relief. He grabs the checkbook Lily’s left on the hall table. “Sure, we can do that.”

“Meanwhile I’m going to get the ladder. Where’s the best spot to get on the roof?”

“The roof?”

The man looks up. His mouth, crooked as an accidental gash, expresses his growing impatience. “How’d you think wasps got in—by ringing the doorbell? Read your contract. Part of our service agreement is that we fix up the point of entry for you too.”

Duncan nods unhappily; the complications are endless.

“Lots of the other guys just get out the nests and call it a day. We even do a follow-up check in a few weeks.”

“Right, okay.” He stares at the red welt on the hooked bridge of the man’s nose. “Only now’s not a good time. I’ll have to get back to you when my wife’s home.”

“I tell you, the longer you wait, you’re just inviting back whatever got away.” He lifts his clipboard and uses it to scratch his chin. “But if you gotta consult with the pants, go for it.”

“It’s just the arrangement with the Historical Society,” Duncan says. “They need to know anytime we, uh, do anything structural.”

“Well, you folks don’t have to be around for me to get up on the roof. You only here part-time, right? I can come back anytime.”

“Actually, we’re here pretty much the entire summer.” He skims quickly around his own absence.

“Really?” The man rips an invoice off his pad, his business number
printed with the crude and deliberate serifs of Middle English. “You been hearing that cannon at night?”

Duncan folds the invoice carefully. No point in feigning ignorance with the locals. “Yes, we’ve heard it.” After all, a yard full of men saw him at Skinner’s that night. “Guess it’ll stop now that he found the pig.”

“Well, that’s damn unlikely.” The exterminator laughs. “That crazy old bastard’s not looking for a thief anymore. We’ve got a killer on our hands.”

I
t’s been a long time since she’s seen any of his work and she is curious. Duncan is a talker by nature, an opinion-seeker who freely solicits the views of cabdrivers and checkout girls, who is always deferential to the taste of the house sommelier. And yet, he hasn’t once asked Lily for her opinion on his spots. She slithers into the sunroom. He has rarely been so tight-lipped or guarded about a project and she takes this as an indication of his growing confidence in the campaign.

Lily flips through the first of the overturned pages. It’s natural, isn’t it, to want insight into her husband’s work? His achievements? As discordant as their relationship may be, she does know how fervently he wants to be a success.

Jesus. Lily looks up from the script. When did Duncan start writing this? She walks between the sunroom and front hall, trying to move out
of the pocket of odor surrounding this spot. She glances down the drive to make sure he’s not coming. When did this happen, when had words acquired smell?

Lily opens the front door in hopes of a breeze. She moves through the hall and back toward his desk, trying to fit this new direction into the groove of Duncan’s original brief. He was supposed to be writing a
commercial for women’s jeans. So where did this stuff—the slaughter of farm women—come from? Even with her scant knowledge of war, she’d say the borrowing and cursory handling of the Vietnamese conflict is highly inappropriate for a denim campaign. And vulgar. It’s obvious Duncan’s portraying a war without bothering to develop the historical dimensions of the subject. His references lack solid materiality; it reads like pulp. Just an amalgamation of battle scenes stripped of context to allow more on-screen gore. And the use of women? Lily shakes her head. This isn’t advertising, it’s misogyny.

Which is why Stand and Be Counted will love it. She slides the script under the pile where she found it. It’s sick, bordering on satirical, and just the sort of troubling and sensational Hollywood-studded television fodder that Duncan’s client will eat with a spoon. Lily’s never doubted his talent for work. For understanding the risks and offenses sometimes necessary to break through the clutter reel of trash out there. In fact, if she knows anything about ads from the years she’s spent with him, she’s willing to bet he’ll take home an armload of awards for this. Perhaps another gold One Show Pencil. In terms of the moral scope of advertising, Lily herself has no battle to wage. She’s known Duncan far too long to be troubled by industry details. If she wanted to whine about hypocrisy and lack of societal value, she’d start with her own career and the university. Lily touches the knoll on her forehead and remembers Kitten’s loud and hopeful spousal abuse accusations. No, what worries her isn’t the platform. It’s the genesis of the creation, the source of his inspiration.

Duncan knows he’s being watched. He’s got the countenance of a criminal; the slouch, the eyes all viscous shift along aisles of hardware, his beard growing in at awkward angles. When he walked in, old Wakefield nodded from behind the counter.
I got my eye on you, buddy.

He buries his hands in his pocket. Doesn’t help that he’s totally
forgotten what he’s come for. Something for the nanny, for digging out the nanny. He feels scattered today, but also strangely useful. Earlier he’d cracked open the upstairs bathroom to tape plastic over the crumbling ceiling plaster. Now he’s taking a break from the TV scripts he’s been pounding out. He’s decided to present the scripts as monologues, starting with a ninety-second launch spot, describing the action first and then showing storyboards at the end. He thinks the Stand and Be Counted client needs more performance than presentation. After all, at first even
he
was surprised by his own outrageous manipulation of Vietnam. But if Duncan’s learned anything from men like Hawke, it’s how much you can get away with if you look like you know what you’re doing. He’s seen it work on Anne and Leetower. Even Kooch. They intuit the strength of his belief in the work, and with just that, they climb on board.

Duncan stops in front of a rack of shovels. It’s hard to believe the garden was his project, initially. Lily had ordered him here to pick up something. A fine-point spade? For the smaller bones. Or a brush and pan to sift dirt. Duncan lifts a broad trowel, turns it over in his hands and then puts it back on the display rack. He’s read that over half the bones in the human body are in the hands and feet. So it seems impossible that they haven’t come across more of the small ones. He can’t imagine Oster holding any back; who would risk that sort of link to a vanished nanny?

Duncan’s been chewing over the lumber baron’s culpability. If you want to call it culpability. After all, once Oster had set up a successful sawmill, the next logical step was to produce an heir to that mill. He wanted to replicate himself—a man of importance. Why not create a family to rival the Vanderbilts? The Astors, maybe. Thinking about it in those terms, Tinker really had brought about her own brutal fate by attempting to rob him of this lineage. Later, to ensure there was no evidence, she was disposed of in the one place where he could keep an eye on her. What man worth his salt wouldn’t have done what Oster had? Yes, Duncan’s quite certain that Tinker is all down there. They just haven’t dug deep enough.

“Something I can help you with?”

The voice jars him, seems to come from an aisle over but Wakefield is actually standing shoulder to shoulder with him. Has puddled together in the periphery.

“You the guy at Skinner’s the other night? Mr. and Mrs. up at Oster Haus?” The man wears a leather apron with bulging pockets. His nails are ground down to the quick, the thick fingers of one who sorts staples and drill bits for pleasure. “Doing some gardening up there?”

Duncan hasn’t spoken in hours, has no clue what polyphonic and crazed sound he might make if he opens his mouth. But the old store owner is waiting for some reply.

“Thinking about it.”

“Sure, saw you buying a shovel the other day.” The guy frowns. “Looking for another one already?” He looks Duncan over as if drawing up details for the clan report.

“Can’t have too many.” Duncan shrugs. Does Wakefield have an idea of what’s been going on in the backyard? He might. It’s a small town; all it takes is someone out for a drive, stopping to take a look at the historical Oster Haus, the acres of Dutchess County barley surrounding it. Then Tinker will be taken away from them. Even if it was her own fault she ended up where she did, Duncan doesn’t want anyone else poking around the bones of his nanny.

“Well, least we know you’re not trying to bury the pig up there, hey?”

Duncan snorts, startling the both of them with this attempt at laughter. This is no way to deflect suspicion. The man takes a step back, picks a slipped coil of garden hose off the floor. “You hear Skinner’s on a real tear now?”

“I think I heard something,” Duncan says.

“That bloody pig.” Wakefield shakes his head and winds the hose back on the shelf. “They fished it out of a dumpster. By the old sawmill—that restaurant. Imagine it’s been rotting to hell in this heat.”

“Dumpster?” Duncan fights for neutrality in his inflection.

“I do have it on good account that the boar’s head was bashed in.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sir. I am not.”

“Who’d put it in a dumpster?”

“Well, ain’t that the million-dollar question.” Wakefield leans against a rack, raps his knuckles against the flat pan of a shovel blade. “Tell you what. I know Skinner now for a number a’ years. And to him, nobody is above suspicion around here.” He looks at Duncan as though inspecting the quarter-inch shank of a carbide router bit.

It’s unclear whether there’s an element of threat in this last section of speech. An informal notification that he and Lily have risen to the top of the perpetrator list? Dismissing the fact that he’s technically guilty of the crime, Duncan finds himself skipping to the defense.
We have no motivation.
He’s told Lily this a number of times to reassure her. But then, how relevant is motivation in these parts? Here, in the heartland of cow tipping, their motivation need be as simple as getting a kick from wrongful death.