Night Relics (5 page)

Peter gave the wooden heart a shove, so that it swung back and forth like a pendulum. It dawned on him that he was chasing
ghosts, driving like crazy out of the hills in order to wander around the empty house. What did he expect to find? A clue
to what? Outside, the wind blew past the lonesome willow tree in the yard, making the branches sway. He sat daydreaming for
a moment, nearly hypnotized by the easy dance of the slender willow branches.

Then, in a rush, he was struck with the uncanny notion that he had seen this very same thing before—early this morning. Except
that his predawn hallucination had been even more real, if that were possible, with its kitchen sounds and smell of charcoal
smoke. Now, except for the swishing of branches beyond the window, all was quiet, and the only smell in the air was the faintly
dusty odor of a closed-up house.

He was looking at the tree from the same angle, from underneath, looking up at the silver-white undersides of the leaves.
It was a different season and a different wind, and the shadows were wrong, but what he had seen that morning had clearly
been a view of the backyard willow tree as seen through David’s bedroom window, through David’s eyes. It had been something
almost telepathic, like a borrowed memory—David’s memory.

The wind picked up outside now, and the sunlit willow branches flailed away, showering the air with leaves. He stood up. It
was time to go. There was no use drowning himself in memories and regrets.

He stepped across and swung the closet door shut. Sitting behind it, where it had been hidden by the open door, was a piece
of canvas luggage. It was David’s overnighter, the zipper open, the bag full of the clothes that he should have taken to Hawaii.

B
ERNARD
P
OMEROY LOOKED HIMSELF OVER IN THE REARVIEW
mirror. His skin was dry and itchy along the side of his nose and flaking where he had shaved that morning. He dabbed
on moisturizing cream and rubbed it in carefully, then worked a little drop of cream over each eye. He took out his pocket
comb and smoothed his eyebrows. Hard to believe it was only an hour ago that he’d parted company with Mr. Ackroyd. He had
made a quick decision, but if you hesitated you were lost in this business. And there’d been no question that the old man’s
mind was made up. He wasn’t going to move unless he was pushed.

Pomeroy’s face was blemish free, the flesh almost translucent, his nose small and straight. Overall his appearance was perfectly
bland. A woman had told him that once. She had said that he looked like someone out of a composite drawing by a police artist,
facial features copied from a book of common noses and eyebrows and ears.

Actually, it had been a fairly clever thing to say, under the distressing circumstances. Since then he had realized that a
bland man is very nearly an invisible man, and the idea didn’t bother him at all. Through the windshield he could just see
the creek through the trees. Bushes on the hillsides jerked and shuddered in the wind. That was what screwed up his skin—this
damned wind dried everything out. He put the vial away and began fastidiously to brush his hair back. Then he opened the leeward
window of the car, took a travel-sized bottle of hair spray out of his toiletries
kit, and sprayed his hair until it was stiff. He checked his smile in the mirror, hauled a container of mint-flavored string
out of the kit and flossed his teeth, then threw the used floss out the open window.

One thing he had learned selling cars was that people naturally liked a well-groomed man. It sounded superficial, but that
didn’t make a bit of difference. Grooming was essential to success. People understood it to be a sign of quality. He had business
cards that read, “Quality, an American way of life.” One of his other cards displayed a fish symbol along with chapter and
verse numbers from the Bible. He could scope a customer out in half a second and give them the right card nearly every time.

Another thing he knew from selling cars is that you don’t let up on people. You don’t take no for an answer. If there’s any
hesitation, you’ve got to
tell
them what they want. He had miscalculated with old Ackroyd, though, when he talked to him this morning. He knew the man was
a Christian—he had learned that much from Klein—but the fish card hadn’t worked on him. It had only seemed to irritate him.
Pomeroy had read him for a tough nut right then and there. Nothing that couldn’t be cracked, though, if you knew where to
squeeze.

He opened the door, stepped out into the weeds of the little turnout, and locked up the rented Thunderbird. Then he opened
the trunk and pulled out a white plastic garbage bag. Carrying the bag, he set out up the road, dressed in a pair of Jordache
jeans and Reebok tennis shoes and with a cashmere sweater draped casually over his shoulders. He cocked his head as he walked
so that the wind kept his hair pressed flat.

Ten feet from the car, the wind abruptly yanked the sweater off his shoulders and threw it onto the dirt road. Pomeroy grabbed
at it with his free hand, but the wind was quicker, and the sweater cartwheeled backward into the side of the Thunderbird,
crucifying itself momentarily against the red paint of the fender. Dropping his trash bag onto the
side of the road, he lunged after the sweater just as the wind snatched it up again and dragged it under the chassis, trapping
a sleeve beneath a tire.

He tried to yank the sweater loose, but the sleeve wedged itself tighter, and he had to get down onto his hands and knees
to wiggle it out. He stood up, shaking dirt out of the sweater and dusting off the knees of his jeans. There was a dirty oil
smear across the chest of the sweater. He’d have to get the damned thing cleaned now. Trying to pull himself together again,
he reopened the trunk, dropped the sweater in, and then checked his hair in the window reflection. Not a strand had moved.
He looked professional

A partly decomposed rat had fallen out of the open trash bag on the road. Pomeroy found a piece of stick and shoved the thing
back inside, where there were two other rats, more recently dead. They stank like hell in the hot plastic bag. Pomeroy hated
to touch it, but the morning was wearing on. There would be people around soon.

The old man wasn’t home—Pomeroy had seen him leave, driving into town for his weekend grocery run. He glanced around quickly,
making double sure that there was no car beside the house, nobody walking along the road, and then he walked to the rear door,
where he wouldn’t be easily seen. For safety’s sake he knocked before he tried the knob. There was no answer, and the door
was dead-bolted tight. The windows were latched, too. It would be easy enough to break one, climb in, and just tear the place
up, but then Ackroyd would know that someone had been screwing around there, and that might blow the whole deal. Pomeroy would
save that for later, if it was necessary. Breaking and entering wasn’t in the cards today. And anyway, Klein would have a
coronary over it.

Pomeroy laughed out loud. Klein was a high-blood-pressure type. His face got red like a sunburn when he was mad. Telling him
about this morning might just be the last straw for him. His circuits would fry and he’d drop dead.

The water tank was up on the hill behind the house,
mostly hidden from below. He hiked up toward it, carrying the bag of dead rats along a little overgrown trail slippery with
loose rock. The rats stank to high heaven, and the smell nearly made him sick. He looked behind him down the steep hillside,
and right then a Siamese cat darted across the yard below. It stopped outside the back door of the house and sat staring into
the trees, then started to wipe its face with a paw.

Pomeroy hesitated, struck with his second brilliant idea that morning.

P
ETER PICKED UP
D
AVID’S BAG AND LAID IT ON THE BED
. Instinctively he knew what it meant, even before his mind had come to the obvious conclusion. He sorted through it carefully,
tilting the open bag toward the window to catch the sunlight. There were two pairs of swimming trunks on top. Underneath were
comic books, a pair of zorries, a T-shirt wrapped around a Sony Walkman, headphones, and the little packet of postcard stamps.

Peter dropped the bag and went out, up the hall and into Amanda’s bedroom. Her luggage was spread out over the bed, opened
up, only half-packed. Bathing suits, beach towels, sandals—all the vacation stuff was there. It was clean and neatly stacked
and organized, by a person systematic about packing, someone going away, not someone returning. A few pieces of folded clothing
were piled on the bed and chair. There was nothing on the floor—no dirty clothes, no souvenirs.

Peter ran out into the living room, looking for something to explain what was obvious. He found the week’s mail scattered
on the floor under the mail slot. Frantically he sorted through it, checking return addresses, searching for anything at all.
Nothing. Just bills, junk, magazines, some of it addressed to him. He let it lie and headed back into the kitchen.

Leaning with both hands against the edge of the counter, he closed his eyes and forced himself to think. Amanda and David
hadn’t been home for a week. That much was clear. And wherever they’d gone—if in fact they’d gone anywhere—they hadn’t taken
anything with them.

Possible answers to the riddle filtered into his mind, and the atmosphere of the house was suddenly threatening. He found
that he was listening hard, like someone awakened by a noise in the night.

But aside from the mail strewn on the floor, there was no sign of anything out of place in the kitchen or living room, no
evidence of trouble, of an intruder. Carefully, not knowing what to expect, Peter pushed open the door of the den, letting
it swing wide before looking in, half expecting something that he couldn’t picture or put into words.

It was just another empty room. Both bathrooms were clean except for the windblown dust on the countertops and windowsills.

The fourth bedroom, Amanda’s study, was as tidy as the rest of the house. For a moment he hoped he would find an explanatory
note there, but the only thing on the desktop was a check register and last month’s canceled checks, sorted and stacked.

Seeing them there propelled him back into Amanda’s bedroom. He pulled open her carry-on bag and hauled out a sweater, a paperback
novel, a hairbrush, and a crossword puzzle magazine. He unzipped the inside pocket. Three stacks of traveler’s checks lay
inside, tucked into plastic cases along with three hundred dollars in twenties. Two sets of airline tickets were slid in alongside,
enclosed in a heavy
paper envelope advertising Slotsy Tours and Travel. His hands shook as he set the tickets down on the dresser.

Move
, he told himself, and he sprinted to the back door, pulled it open, and ran to the garage, going in through the side door.
He flipped on the light switch, half expecting to see Amanda and David slumped in the parked car. But the Honda Accord sat
there as ever, empty, bad brakes and all.

He shut the light off and went back out into the sunlight, knowing that he wouldn’t find any answers in the house. Amanda
and David hadn’t come home since their trip out to the canyon to visit him last Sunday afternoon. There was no use quizzing
the neighbors. He would make one phone call and then go to the police. He found Amanda’s telephone book in the kitchen, scanned
a couple of pages, then punched a number into the phone.

It rang once, twice, three times; he closed his eyes, listening to the fourth and fifth rings. “Answer it!” he said out loud,
straight into the mouthpiece, and a voice on the other end, sounding puzzled, said, “What?”

“Peggy!”

“Peter?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Peter.”

“I nearly hung up on you. What were you yelling about?”

“I thought you weren’t going to answer.”

“Oh,” she said. “How’s it going? What’s up? Hear from Mandy?”

“No,” Peter said. “Not yet. I’m over at the house, though. I came over to work on her car.” He watched through the window
as he talked. The wind was tearing across the backyard now, blowing the limbs of the willow tree nearly horizontal. Leaves
whirled away up the driveway. He forced himself to sound calm and reasonable.

“She told me you were going to fix the brakes. I think she thought it was a little funny. Don’t be too nice, Peter.”

“I’ve never been accused of that before, actually, but thanks. What I want to know,” he said, choosing his words
carefully, “is how upset she seemed a week ago when you drove her home from my place.”

“You mean when I drove her up there. I didn’t drive her home.”

Peter sat down hard on a kitchen chair. “That’s what I meant,” he said.

That was it. He could hang up now. He knew what he had to know.

“Well, she was kind of upset,” Peggy said, “because I didn’t have time to stop at the store so she could get the stuff you
wanted. Frankly, she said you’d be a pain in the ass about it.”

“I was,” Peter said. “That’s just what I was.”

“It was my fault, really. I left something at home and then had to go back for it. It was a real mess. I was late for work,
so she said to pass on the groceries. Did you yell at her?”

“No,” Peter said. But actually he had. Both of them had done some yelling—very quietly so that David wouldn’t know about it.
Over the years they had got used to yelling quietly. Peter had wanted to make an early dinner for Amanda and David that afternoon,
in celebration of their leaving for Hawaii. He had asked Amanda for a bottle of olive oil and a bunch of garlic and some slipper
lobster tails along with a few other odds and ends—stuff that he couldn’t buy at local stores. She was going to be passing
a gourmet sort of market on the way out with Peggy, so he had left it up to her. She hadn’t brought any of it.

After all the yelling, Peter had gone after it himself, driving all the way out to east Orange when he would have saved time
just driving down into El Toro or across the canyon into Coto de Caza. He could have made spaghetti, for God’s sake, hamburgers.
Somehow, though, he had wanted to
show
her. He didn’t know exactly what that meant now.