Sorrow's Crown (11 page)

I stepped up the porch and the stairs wobbled and creaked under me. I waited for a black cat to leap at my face or an unkindness of ravens to burst from the attic window. A '68 Mustang that looked like it had scraped every highway divider from here to the Holland Tunnel sat at an angle facing the house. Behind it, nearly kissing the bumper, was a GTO that somebody had spent a couple hundred hours restoring to mint condition.

I rang the doorbell and then knocked loudly. It seemed like the kind of house where people might quite often say, "I didn't hear a thing." I waited a minute and repeated the process. And then again. No cats crept along the porch rafters.

The young lady who'd wailed at the funeral finally answered the door. Only one side of her face was visible as she peered through the crack at me. We both looked at each other for a little while. Slowly she opened the door wider, exposing more of her face. She was eighteen or nineteen, with large, pink lips made for pouting that nearly drew complete attention from the deep brown circles under her eyes. A rowdy group of curls hung into the corners of her mouth. Her nerves were clearly shot, and when she said "Yes?" her voice squeaked curiously, hauling the word out and snapping it in half.

I saw the outline of a man next to her behind the door and I dipped forward to get a better look. She jerked back and the young man who'd been comforting her during Teddy
Harnes
' service came into view. She said "Yes?" again and kept it to one syllable this time, the curls edging in and out of her mouth. We watched one another some more, and I understood that the depth of her sorrow was real and I suddenly felt very sorry for her.

"My name is Jonathan Kendrick, Alice. I was hoping I could talk to you for a few minutes."

Her eyes grew wider and I got to see just how bloodshot and raw-looking they were from all the hours of crying. She gasped and pointed at my nose and said, "It's you!"

"Me?"

"The one on television. You're the man who found Teddy."

''Yes, I did."

She appeared to be lost for a moment, and glanced indecisively from side to side. The kid hiding in there with her muttered something in a harsh tone. She shut the door in my face with a heavy blast of air. I heard more quiet but urgent talking as they argued. The door popped open again and she told me, "Please, come inside."

I felt certain the guy would be out of sight but near enough to eavesdrop on everything Alice and I might say. I was wrong. He stood in the foyer with his features tautly drawn like a bow pulled too tightly. He had the grimace of a man holding back a well-
stoked
rage just waiting for an excuse to set it loose.

Alice Conway introduced him. "This is my friend, Brian Frost."

"Hello," I said.

We shook hands and he glared at me and tried to crush my knuckles. He kept scowling, and I could almost hear his brain cackling and shrieking
"Die, die, die!"
I had no idea why, or whether it was focused at me or if he hated the world at large. He had hair so yellow and short that it looked like a huge lemon peel sitting on top of his head. He wore a black sleeveless T-shirt and had the excessive musculature of a serious steroid user. He didn't work his shoulders or stomach enough though, so he also suffered from a somewhat swollen appearance. The enormity of his biceps forced him to sway when he walked.

Alice led us into a spacious and barren living room that had deep grooves in the carpet where a lot of furniture had once rested for many years. Brian leaned against an achingly bare wall where you could see the outlines of paintings that had recently been taken down.

"Did he ... did he try to ... say anything?" she asked.

"No, I'm sorry, he was gone by then."

"Oh, my God."

She wanted to cry more but didn't have anything left to give. I could tell by the way her shoulders shrugged inward and hands drooped to her sides that she must have felt as if a fist were barreling into the center of her chest. I've felt that way a few times myself.

"How did you know Teddy?" I asked.

"I was his girlfriend."

Teddy's presence, unlike his father's, seemed to be solidifying. He grew around me, a ghost taking on a more substantial form with each person I met who knew him. Here was someone who sobbed and trembled at his loss, those beautiful lips had touched his. It felt as if Teddy stood at my shoulder, urging me on.

I took a deep breath. I couldn't shake my odd doubts that he might still be alive; that Wallace may have been mistaken, duped, or influenced.

The boy's face—why had they taken his face?

"Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to hurt Teddy?"

"No!" she said. "There was no one."

"Are you sure?"

"Teddy didn't even know that many people. He was... shy. Reserved. For most of his life he traveled around the world with his father. He never had a stable home life, and there were a fleet of stepmothers. Spending so many years in the Orient and South America, without being able to speak much of the languages, he learned to live comfortably with his own company. They really didn't settle back into New York until two summers ago.”

“Did he like it here after being gone for so long?”

“We didn't really go out much at all, and when we did it was up to the mountains or to the preserves. Or bookstores. He loved to read, and read everything he could get his hands on. He returned all the books for credit or else just gave them away. With his money he could have bought anything he liked, but he didn't believe in materialism. A few weeks ago he started getting involved in volunteer work, some community service. He was interested in nature, and started to take up painting. He loved Chinese brushwork. He learned a lot about being ... spiritual, I guess you would call it, in China, by watching the monks and the people at their shrines.”

“He was religious then?”

“He loved Eastern culture. He cared about aesthetics."

Brian Frost snorted loudly.

"You disagree?" I asked him.

He said nothing, but his face tightened even more until I thought his chin and forehead would meet.

I turned back to Alice. "What did he think of his father?”

“He loved his father, of course. Very much.”

“Did Teddy ever mention
Crummler
?"

Alice hesitated and grimaced at Frost, who continued to smolder in silence. "Yes, he liked the man," she admitted. Her voice continued to strain and splinter, wavering from a whisper to a whimper. "Teddy thought
Crummler
was blessed, in a way.
Crummler
had the proper sense of respect for the dead, and made the cemetery into a beautiful place of worship, the way they do in the East. Teddy's mother is buried in Felicity Grave, and he said that
Crummler
not only understood the beauty of the land, but the reverence for the departed."

Respect for the dead
. Anna had said the same thing.

"That's all such shit," Brian Frost hissed. They were the first words I'd actually heard him speak, and about what I expected. "That
Crummler
guy is a bum. Just a crazy bum who tried to rob Teddy."

"Do you have a photo of him?" I asked Alice.

Frost tipped himself off the wall and took a step toward me. "You don't have to show or tell this guy anything."

"It's okay, Brian," she said and quickly reached behind her to a breakfront where some knickknacks and pictures still rested.

"He isn't a cop, you don't have to let him stand here and question you." Frost started flexing. Actually, I was surprised he'd managed to contain himself this long. "You sound like the police, but you aren't, are you?"

“No."

"You sound like that deputy. Tully. We had to talk to him, but we don't have to listen to your questions."

I figured Lowell would have beaten me here, and knew that after having been questioned already Alice would be a lot more reticent with me. "It's just that I never got a chance to meet Teddy," I said.

"So, why the hell do you care?"

Alice touched him softly on the back and handed me a framed photograph. "This was taken last summer."

Frost looked like a nice kid when the lines of his face weren't folded into a blazing hatred, trying to use psychic powers to make people shrivel up. He hadn't indulged in steroids then and was almost skinny. No wonder he was so angry. A side-effect of overindulgence in steroids can lead to aggressive, combative behavior, what they used to call "
roid
rage" back when I was in high school. We had some players on the football team who would smuggle the stuff in. They'd also get the chills and have a hell of a time getting even minor bleeding to stop if they happened to get cut during a game.

In the photo Alice appeared extremely happy, with a bright smile that reached her eyes and ignited her whole being with exuberance.

Teddy
Harnes
stood between them.

Unlike his father, Teddy appeared to have a glowing personality to him, leaning into the camera as if wanting to launch himself forward, one arm around Alice and the other around Brian's shoulders, pulling his friends to him. He had black hair with large looping curls that spilled down his collar and hooked against his forehead. I had no way of telling if this was the kid I'd found dead on the ground, but I kept staring, hoping that something would trigger.

"Do you know his father well?"

"Why would you ask that?" Frost said. He flexed a little more, his pectorals heaving. "Now why would you want to know something like that?"

"I'm just trying to find out what might have happened.”

“He's dead and they arrested the killer who did it, and I hope they fry his ass even if he is a retard."

"Look, I think—"

"That's enough," Brian Frost told me. He was the kind of guy who raged up to the point when he was about to cut loose, then grew calm. All the fury left his face and I knew our sociable, amicable time had about run out. "You can leave now, you son of a bitch."

He put his hand on my chest and shoved me backward, then did it again as I backtracked step by step down the hall. I stumbled and Alice's eyes grew wide with terror.

"Don't push me, kid."

"Screw off, creep."

Frost got ready to prod me once more but I dodged out of reach and opened the door. I couldn't see any point in arguing, fighting, or bothering them further. When I got out onto the porch, Frost lunged and elbowed me in the kidney, slamming the door and locking it.

I floundered down the steps and landed on my ass, then sat with the wind blowing and piling leaves against my back. I looked up at the highest dark window far above. I saw nothing, but could imagine a hand slowly releasing a lace curtain, and a ghostly figure quickly easing away.

I couldn't shake the stupid feeling. I wondered if Teddy
Harnes
was alive and hiding somewhere in the bowels of the black house or someplace else, and if so, what he was running from, and who was buried in his grave.

Katie turned to the door as the bells jangled, smiled at me, and said into the phone, "Carl, you're not listening, you hate to listen. Do not send me irises. No, I am not imploring, I am simply telling you. Stop buying irises. You always get stuck with inventory and then try to unload your rotting overstock on me. Yes, Carl, always."

She swung back and forth behind the counter, checking through papers, opening drawers, and began packing together a bouquet. She had a fluidity of motion that I could watch for hours, a combination of ballet, aerobics, and erotic dancing.

Her eyes, as usual, flashed with unrestrained feeling, showing everything that was going on inside her, perfectly expressive and easy to read. She smiled again and my chest loosened; brick by brick the rest of life fell away, and I got a little heady again with my love for her. She scratched the tip of her nose and cocked her ear away from the phone because Carl the
jughead
was fouling her orders again and whining loudly about it. I heard his high-pitched pleas and yammering from across the room. She needed to connect with another supplier but hadn't managed to find a competent one yet. I never realized gardening could lead to such a cutthroat industry.

Katie's dimples came and went as she worried her lips for a moment. "I send the check when I receive the orders. That's how it works in this world, Carl. Goodbye." She hung up with a slam. "Jerk."

"Carl has not exactly established himself as reliable," I said.

"As a matter of fact, Carl has established himself as a grade-A moron, is what he's done."

I sat and pulled her onto my lap and kissed her for a long time. I stroked and smoothed the line between her brows, caressing her face, and gently touched the length of her soft, cool neck. As I pressed my lips on her throat she sighed. She grinned her crooked grin at me and my breath hitched in the same way it had when I'd first seen her, and every time since.

"I missed you, too," she said. "Been a long day?"

"You could say that."

"Want to tell me about it?"

I shrugged and shifted her farther back into my arms. "I got yelled at by a lot of people."