Sorrow's Crown (21 page)

As in times of past crises, for some reason I felt more comfortable sleeping on the couch. Maybe because it reminded me of my parents, or because I found a certain solace in the books and photo collages. Anna and I always slept only six hours, and virtually nothing could change our internal clocks. We both quietly got dressed as though afraid to alert the other to our presence.

The swelling had gone down a little, leaving only a few crusted abrasions and sore knots the size of peach pits. I emptied the lukewarm water from the ice pack and refilled it with ice. At his worst, loaded every night, my father used to hide gin in the rubber bladder, and despite the years it still smelled faintly of liquor. Anubis caught a whiff and snorted happily, tongue poking out an inch and his tail thumping loudly. I always suspected my father didn't like to drink alone.

I heard nothing more from my grandmother's bedroom, and sat wondering what kind of revelations might be heading my way and how bad they would be.

Before leaving the Conway house, I'd had a brief but compact discussion with Lowell on everything that had happened during the day. He stood with a completely stone countenance, the way Nick
Crummler
might have, and silently seethed as the bodies in the Grove piled up. Sheriff
Broghin
got sick all over the floor before they'd even finished bagging all the evidence. Keaton Wallace, another drinking partner of my father's back when they'd wandered home together, shirtless and singing "The Loveliest Night of the Year," looked pleased with himself; even at his most intoxicated Wallace had never fouled up a crime scene or vomited across a chalk line. Lowell listened to me, the muscles in his jaws looking hard enough to withstand a thrown brick, knowing he had to get
Crummler
out of
Panecraft
, but realizing they were both too mired in the system.

Thinking about some of that, still stroking Anubis, I fell asleep.

When I awoke the second time Anna sat reading Charles Williams'
Go Home, Stranger
in the living room. I checked my watch: 7:30. Over an hour had passed, but Anubis still sat at my side and my hand was still on his back. He turned and looked at me inspecting the damage, or wanting more gin. He didn't shove at me to take him for a walk the way he used to do. I had a feeling he'd never want to go for a walk again.

Anna said, "Good morning, Jonathan. How are you feeling?"

I sat up and my neck cracked so loudly that it echoed in the kitchen. "I don't think I can honestly answer that in mixed company."

"How is your vision? Blurred at all?"

“No."

"That's reassuring. Still, we should not have been so hasty to leave the hospital last night. Such a ridiculous place, to keep us waiting over an hour."

She took the ice pack into the kitchen and refilled it with even more cubes, returned and placed it on the top of my head. I felt significantly silly. Anubis wagged his tail some more, thinking there was another few shots in it for him. My grandmother took my face in her hands the way she had last night, and I got that same sense of my adulthood crumbling between her fingers until I was a little boy again. "Do you feel hungry? Would you like some breakfast? There is an egg-white omelet and French toast still heated on the oven."

"No, thank you, I'm going to have breakfast with Katie."

"Good, you haven't seen her much the past few days."

"I need to talk to her. I need to talk to you, too."

She dropped the open book in her lap, bending the spine in a fashion that made me cringe: the dry, dissolving fifty-year-old glue gave up the long battle of holding in yellowed pages. She loved to read but, like Teddy, didn't love books. "Have you decided on definitive plans for your future with her?"

"No," I told her, and felt foolish saying it, as if the woman I loved and our unborn child deserved only my fear and not enough of my time. "I need to tell her that someone broke into the shop last night."

"There is such a thing as a floral thief?"

"Vandals."

"Oh dear, was there much damage?"

"Lowell says no."

She didn't even have to consider it for long. Sunlight drifted over her legs and caught in the spokes where it danced, giving her a silver sheen. "And you believe it might be your former teammate?"

"
Arnie
Devington
, yeah."

Anna sighed, something like a sound of defeat, but not quite. It scared me a little anyway, and I perked up in my seat. She must have also smelled the gin, and been thinking some of the same thoughts as I was, the dead past always clutching like inflexible fists. "Do you plan to wallop him further?"

"I think I've had enough of that lately."

"I agree. Despite his fixations he is someone more deserving of pity, from what you've told me."

"Maybe. It's a moot point, more or less. He's gotten a few extra licks in, maybe he's flushed it out of his system."

"Perhaps you have as well, Jonathan. You don't appear nearly as agitated as before."

"I said what I had to say, but instead of cooling him off I may have just pushed all the wrong buttons. He hit the shop, but not when Katie was there. I think he must've realized he was breaking the rules. Same as when I made that crack about his wife."

"And you feel, after all this time, rules must be applied."

I tried to find that rage I'd felt that day in their yard, but all I could come up with was the sickness of seeing that family so tied to their own losses, the busted glass in their overgrown grass like the regrets and broken expectations of their lives. "Yeah, I suppose I do, though I'm not sure why."

"Because you must follow an honorable course," my grandmother said, "even if it brings you into contact with miscreants."

My head began to throb worse, sending a surf of pain into the back of my eyes. Everything we talked about seemed to be merely preamble.

"Deputy Tully may be in a better position to cool him off," she said.

"That would involve walloping, I think."

"Maybe not."

I thought of calling Katie, but about now she'd be in the throes of morning sickness and heading back to bed for another hour of sleep. Anna read the Williams novel, tugging too hard on the frail pages so that every so often I heard the soft snap of paper peeling free from the spine. My stomach spun in time with the thrumming behind my eyes. I cared too much about books. I should've been capable enough to stick them on the shelves of the flower shop and watch over an infant crawling across the carpet. I should've been bold enough to go out to lunch at
Pembleton's
and eat purple stuff every day like the rest of them. So where did all the resistance come from? The kind I hadn't even felt last night while Shanks stood this close to beating me to death.

Anna said, "We must talk."

"Okay."

We kept silent for a few more minutes.

She shifted in her wheelchair and
Go Home, Stranger
fell from her lap and struck Anubis across his toenails. As if he was playing the shell game, he immediately moved his paw and covered the title.

"You apparently feel at odds with me. Or worse, you feel I am in conflict with you. That isn't the case, Jonathan, nor could it ever be. You're concerned that I am not being completely open with you about this investigation."

Like "plotted" and "case," my grandmother enjoyed the word "investigation," even though all I'd learned so far was how little I knew. I no longer accepted the possibility that Wallace had been bribed or duped by a fake passport—an idea that had drifted like smoke, like the life of Teddy himself. I still had no idea why Teddy had been murdered, or why
Crummler
had been set up, or what
Harnes
planned to do with him, especially now that Shanks had been killed as well. Above all that, more meaningful to me at this minute, remained the fact that I was extremely worried about all my grandmother
wasn't
telling me.

"Yes," I said. "I'm concerned."

Anna pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger and I realized we were going to skirt that issue entirely and get into the rest of it instead. Maybe she'd picked up enough from
Harnes
to make sense of the situation. I remained torn. I didn't want to get into all of this now. Brent would be scared as hell today. I looked at my watch again. I should get down to the shop and check out Roy's patch-up job before Katie saw the mess. Lowell would be learning everything he could about Shanks and Nick
Crummler
. I slid forward on the couch and the crick in my neck caused more crackling noises. Sharp pains skittered up and down my skull. I should have stayed for the CAT scan last night; my brain felt slung over to one side of my head. The ice pack dropped to the floor. Anubis saw the bladder and started wagging his tail and doing a fair imitation of the flamenco, kicking further hell out of the book.

"Brian Frost, perhaps in an effort to protect Alice Conway, may have murdered Teddy," Anna said.

"I thought of that myself."

"The possibility also exists that Alice is lying. She may have, in fact, orchestrated the entire blackmail scheme."

"Yes," I agreed. I believed Alice's sorrow, but that didn't mean she hadn't killed her own boyfriend.

"Or unbeknownst to her, Teddy may still be alive."

The face. Why had they…?

I'd gone to the house to hunt for Teddy or find proof of whoever might have taken his place, but I'd never even made it up the stairs. "I had a hunch, but after being in that house last night, I'm leaning against it. If Teddy had been there he would have either been working with them in blackmailing his own father, or Frost and Alice would've had to keep him under lock and key. If he was with them, he'd have helped Frost. If not, I'm assuming Shanks would have let him go."

"Did you search the house?"

"No."

"So Teddy, if he truly is the hand behind these ugly circumstances, might possibly still be there. Or there may be evidence of some other sort that Alice is concealing. I am not positive that she told us the complete truth about her relation-ship with Teddy."

"Neither am I. Lowell must've searched the place thoroughly, though. Since we don't know anything about Teddy, and there's been no real evidence that he's still alive, maybe we'd do better to concentrate on only one line of reasoning."

"I agree."

"He's dead."

"Why would they have mutilated his features?"

Once again I felt something from her life seeping from her. I wanted to find those invisible wounds and cover them with my hands, and keep her from dissipating into the air around me.

"Do you trust Nick
Crummler
?" she asked.

"He saved my life."

"By murdering Freddy Shanks. And why would Shanks involve himself directly in such a manner?"

"I don't know, it seems out of character."

"For such a brute."

"And for
Harnes
, as well.
Harnes
is way too smooth to let things get so messy. He could have simply given Alice a little money. Or more to the point,
Harnes
could have allowed Teddy to be with Alice and accept his responsibility where the child was concerned."

I had no doubt that Anna would be amused by my saying that, and wonder just how much of it was intended as a parallel to my own situation with Katie and our baby. The conversation could have easily shifted, but I knew she wouldn't harp on it.

"You fear I am in love with Theodore
Harnes
," she said.

"No," I answered honestly. "That's the only thing I'm sure about, that you're not in love with him. At least not anymore. But you're holding something back, and that chafes me, Anna."

"Not only held back from you, but perhaps from myself.”

“Oh cripes, what does that mean?" She didn't seem to know. "What did you and he talk about?"

"Very little of consequence, actually."

"You were with him alone all night."

"In the library, yes. I was, foolish as it may sound... studying him. I find it fascinating that he has no moral convictions whatsoever, and yet is capable of great feats of merit, at least where his accumulation of wealth and entrepreneurial deeds are concerned. He talked of his business ventures, his wives, and even his more notorious affairs. He is forthright about such matters. He spoke of his son at length, yet offered nothing that might shed a new perspective on Teddy's death and
Crummler's
implication in the crime. He sentimentalized without any real sentiment. He adored his son, but in a way that a man might prize a car. He offers up all the authenticity of a poor actor in a bad play, and yet he's honest in his lack of sincerity."

"Could he have killed Teddy?"

"Certainly."

I'd asked her once before if she thought he'd murdered Diane
Cruthers
—I couldn't call her Diane
Harnes
, she remained too alive in the photos, outside his influence now—and she hadn't answered. I asked again.

Anna said, "I know he did. And I realize now how very close I came to having been her. It could easily have been me left behind dead."