StoneDust (5 page)

Chapter 6

My first thought was a weird one: Janey could have taken this; cut up some magazines and faked the threat. It was the anger in her face. You'd expect a mother to be afraid, terrified, but she looked ready to kill someone. Also, the kids were smiling, right at the camera, like they would for someone they knew.

On reflection, the thought made no sense. For one thing, she had no motive. For another, when I put myself deeper in her shoes, I understood the anger. I was a sort of semi-surrogate father to my little neighbor Alison Mealy, and if someone ever threatened her I'd feast on his lungs.

“You should take this directly to Oliver Moody.”

“What's he going to do? Give it a speeding ticket? Besides, I live in Plainfield.”

“Then take it to the Plainfield barracks.”

“And have a bunch of state cops lunking around the yard?”

“Have your friend Greg show it to the state's attorney. If they were my kids I'd take it as a serious threat.”

“You don't get it, do you?”

“Get what, Janey?” I really had a lot of trouble liking her. It was chemical. I just plain didn't like her. She seemed to feel the same about me.

“You scared somebody asking questions. They're trying to warn me off.”

“Oh, for crissake, Janey. I asked a bunch of people if they saw Reg bombed.”

“Did they?”

“No,” I admitted.

She glowered. “What did I tell you?”

I said, “He looks clean from five-thirty to eleven Saturday night. I haven't found anybody yet who saw him after eleven, drunk or sober.”

“Did he go to Duane and Michelle's party?”

“Wasn't invited. Did Greg happen to hear what time the M.E. thinks he died?”

“No.”

“Would you ask him, please?”

Janey snatched up my phone and called lawyer Greg at his office. Turning away so I couldn't hear, she murmured and listened a moment, turned back, whispered, “I love you,” and hung up.

“They just released the report. He died between one and four in the morning.”

“You didn't tell Greg about the note, did you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I am trying to have a relationship with this man. I am trying to have a normal, decent love affair. I'm trying to live a life and maybe find a good man for my children.”

“But the note—”

“Is your job. That's what I'm paying you for. To clean up the mess of my old life and let me get on with the new.”

“No, you are not paying me to clean up your life. And you certainly are not paying me to bodyguard your children.”

“They're not your problem. I've sent them to my mother's for the summer. They're out of here.”

That was more fuel for the anger burning under her skin. “Is she far away?”

“Florida. Her new husband is head of security for a big bank. He has guns. They can't get to them. They're safe for the duration.”

“What duration?”

“Till you clear Reg's name.”

“And you get the insurance.”

“If he was clean—”

I raised a hand. “The M.E. just said no.”

“If he was clean, I have a right to the insurance, and so do my children.”

I said, “You're not telling me everything.”

She said, “Yes, I am,” yanked a checkbook from her bag, and, wielding a ballpoint pen like an icepick, wrote me one for fifteen hundred dollars. “Twenty hours, Ben. That should get you started.”

“Who are the ‘they' who wrote the note?”

“How do I know?”

“Who
would
know?”

“Reg would know.”

“Reg is dead.”

“Bastard.”

I didn't know if she meant me or Reg. She probably didn't either, as she stormed from my office, with every appearance of a woman about to wig out. In case she already had, I dropped her check in the drawer, thinking I'd test the water a little on my own dime before I obligated myself.

***

According to old Al Bell, a gatecrasher had stayed late for the indoor segment of the Fisk party. Now I wondered: Reg, by any chance? High on pistachio ice cream? As that rumor came from the same horny old gossip who had speculated that a stripper had jumped out of a cake and run into the swamp, I saw no profit in pumping Al on the subject. Not when I could tap a disinterested observer of Newbury's goings-on.

I found her with her roses, gardening in a blue cotton dress, narrow-brimmed straw hat, and a simple strand of pearls that China-trader Constantine Abbott had exchanged early last century for opium. She was kneeling on an old piece of carpet, working fertilizer into the soil around each plant with a hand rake.

“Missed one.”

“No, I'm fertilizing half with systemic and half with organic. Look.” She beckoned me closer. “Feel the soil.”

The soil a foot around the rose was packed hard as clay. I'd noticed the same thing around my roses.

“The systemic is wonderful for killing aphids and white fly and a whole raft of horrible insects. But it drives out the worms so the earth just packs harder and harder.”

“But look at your roses.” Connie had Gallicas and Albas and Portland Damasks that the rosarians of the New York Botanical Garden made an annual pilgrimage to visit.

“I thought this year I'd experiment, to see if I can get by without the poisons.” She snipped a piece from a long stick with her razorsharp shears and marked the systemicked bush.

“Connie, may I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“I've been hearing rumors that there was a gatecrasher who stayed late at the Fisks' party. The later party.”

“Fisks?”

“The later party. You know, the sleep—”

“I don't listen to gossip, Ben.”

Her ice-blue eyes shifted from the roses to mine and we slowly stood up together, me offering a hand, which she ignored, pushing off instead with her trowel. I had parachuted into a minefield. True, she was above gossip, yet she somehow managed to know everything going on in town.

“The Fish Line,” I ventured. “I was thinking maybe you heard something on the telephone.”

“Well, even if I had, do you think I'd willy-nilly repeat it?”

“No, but I asked, so it's not willy-nilly. It's a request for information from your nephew—grand-nephew at that—flesh and blood.”

“Do you think I want my nephew—my grand-nephew, my flesh and blood—developing a reputation as a gossip?”

There were times I could not tell whether Connie was laughing at me or deadly serious. I took a chance and guessed the former. “Better a gossip than a rumormonger.”

“Is there a difference?”

“A rumormonger invents it. A gossip makes an effort to get the facts straight.”

“So you're spreading rumors about a gatecrasher.”

“Connie. Give me a break.”

“Put away my things and I'll give you a cup of tea.”

“Deal.”

I loaded fertilizers—organic and systemic—into her wooden wheelbarrow, tossed aboard trowels and rake and shovel and carpet, trundled them to her barn, and put everything in its place. Then I wiped my feet carefully at her kitchen door and found her pouring boiling water. Pots, milk, sugar, cups, and lemon cookies were on a tray, which I carried, following her through her dining room into a seating alcove formed by a bay window that thrust into an old-fashioned garden. We sat on embroidered chairs, facing each other over a low table, where she poured for both of us. A soft breeze tugged the sheer curtains. The garden below was afire in peonies.

“A gatecrasher at the Fisks'?”

“That's what I heard.”

“So did I.”

“You did?”

“Apparently he—or she—stayed for the festivities.” Born shortly after the century, Connie spoke a language rich in euphemism. Lovers were “dear friends.” A guy looking to get laid was a “gentleman caller.” A married woman hosting a boyfriend was “entertaining.” She's influenced my language as well—how many guys my age say “hosting” for “screwing”?—and we both knew that “festivities” was the proper word for “orgy.”

“You heard that? Who told you?”

She fixed me with an iceberg gaze.

I said, “This isn't idle curiosity,” and explained about Janey Hopkins.

“Fifteen hundred dollars! Ben, you could make a living doing this.”

“I'd rather sell houses.”

“It never hurts to have a second arrow in your quiver. I'm glad you took the job. You get bored. And when you get bored you get in trouble.”

“So who told you?”

“I've heard it in bits and pieces—oh, don't look so disappointed. Why don't you go to the original source?”

“Who is?”

“Who started all the talk about the Jacuzzi and the carpet and the mirrors in that ‘party' room of theirs?”

“Who?”

“Marie Butler. Their cleaning woman. Marie was there for the installation of all the accouterments and must have been there to clean up afterwards. Use your head, Ben. The woman would have won a Pulitzer years ago if she worked for a newspaper.”

So I called Marie Butler. Mike, her husband, who had retired quite young on a disability that didn't stop him from hunting, drinking, and bowling, informed me she was working at the Bowlands'.

I drove out to Rick and Georgia Bowlands', a 1980s neo-Victorian that sprouted numerous gables perforated by anachronistic Palladian windows. It was situated in a mini-development of a half-dozen houses of similar taste clustered around a cul de sac. Their nanny, a lonely Scottish woman, was sitting in the sideyard gazebo, rocking an English pram draped with mosquito netting. I waved and headed for the front door.

Rick Bowland, like his corporate neighbors, commuted downstate. They represented a small but growing faction of out-of-towners priced out of the traditional bedroom communities farther south. For half of what they'd pay nearer the Sound, they lived very well in Newbury, though the price was a long drive that got longer every year as more and more of them cluttered country roads.

Unlike most commuters, the Bowlands tried to fit in with local movers and shakers like the Fisks and the Carters; Rick worked hard as a volunteer on Planning and Zoning. I enjoyed them. He was a trifle too buttoned-down, and took more pleasure than I would in suburban toys like his totally tech gas-fired barbecue, yet we usually found something in
The Economist
to commiserate about. Also, I admired his bravery to flaunt even a small mustache on the executive floor.

Georgia was outwardly smooth and upbeat as any publicist. Like most of the breed, she could talk at length about anything, and with a couple of drinks in her she could be very, very funny. She was also fun to look at, as she had a beautiful eye for lothing.

This morning, of course, Rick was off at IBM. Georgia was apparently gone too, as the garage doors were open, with both bays empty. Marie Butler's rusty red Thunderbird of many years was parked in the drive. She let me in with a whooped greeting and a big hug. We'd known each other forever, but my twisted background gave me a special place in her gossipy heart. I reminded myself that whatever I asked I'd hear in the General Store by morning.

“What are you doing here? They selling? I'm not surprised. Everybody in this development owes more on their mortgage than their house is worth. I heard at the bank that two of them are six months behind in payments. So they're selling?”

“Not that I'm aware of.” In fact, I'd always assumed Georgia had money. There was a quality to the furnishings a young couple did not purchase on a salary, while Georgia herself had a certain ease I associated with boarding school and a trust fund, or a doting father.

“Mrs. Bowland just left. She's got another meeting about Steve La France. You seen them bumper stickers? She is one smart cookie. Good thing for Steve. He's dumber than his old man, and we're talkin' dumb.”

“Actually, I came to see you.”

“Find me another job?”

I shook my head. The Bowlands' living room looked like a bomb had hit it: lampshades askew, vacuum hoses snaked like fire hoses in the blitz, paper towels and Windex spray everywhere. I picked up a double photo frame that had tumbled to the carpet. One side showed Georgia holding her baby like an unsolicited delivery from Federal Express, the other, Rick in a Brooks Brothers shirt grilling hot dogs at the Fire Department cookout.

“Yeah, you don't give me work any more. It all goes to your Mrs. Mealy. Well, let me tell you something, Ben. I don't need the work. I got plenty.”

“Your Mrs. Mealy” lived in an apartment over my barn with her daughter, Alison. I'd found them hitchhiking and homeless and brought them home. Marie and her armies had a field day broadcasting their speculations upon our relationship, but gradually the stories had died down, particularly as I was seen around town with several other ladies, including the far more gossipable first selectman.

“I knew you had plenty of work. That's why I passed a couple of things Mrs. Mealy's way.”

“So she could pay your rent.”

Marie, a voluminous, outwardly jolly lady, preferred bad news to good news, dirt to joy. Offering no fuel on the subject of rent, I asked instead, “Are you still working for the Fisks?”

“Sure. Though there's things going on there that would curl your hair.”

“Like what?”

“Where've you been? The party?”

“I was there.”

“You were?”

“It was great. Duane did a marinated lamb he could open a restaurant with.”

Marie looked at me with undisguised pity. “Not the cookout. The
party
. After. In the Jacuzzi.”

“I didn't get in any Jacuzzi.”

“That's 'cause you weren't invited.”

“Who was?” I knew, of course, but I hoped to flatter her into my camp.

“The Bowlands. The Barretts. The Carters.”