Torch Song (8 page)

“Maybe he hid under the bed,” Charlie said. Now, he thought, the big guns would go after Marla's contacts, her clients; there would be a list. He began to ponder the problem of how he could get his hands on it.

“I bet he hasn't been there at all,” Constance said after a long pause. “Until last night, anyway. It's too far from Marla's place, and there's no telephone in the cabin. He certainly wouldn't have gone into town to use a phone, too public.”

And they are in touch, Charlie finished silently for her. He said, “You know, it really doesn't take both of us. We could take turns staying home, tending the fire.” This time, she patted his leg.

That night, holding a book that she was not reading, Constance worried. Had the trap at the cabin been step three? First the threatening note, then the tip to the ATF, next an explosion and fire, possibly another death. If Breckinridge had gotten there first, he would have been killed; Charlie would have been found on the scene of another fire with another body. Step three? But there had been no guarantee that Breckinridge would open that door. It might have been her, or Charlie, who… She shivered. “It hadn't mattered,” she said under her breath. “He didn't care who got killed.”

Charlie put down a magazine he had not been reading and said, “Listen.”

She didn't hear anything.

“Wind,” he said in disgust, and stood up.

Now she heard it. It was March, and a certain amount of wind could be expected, she thought but did not say. He hated high winds; he got twitchy. The cats hated the wind and they got twitchy. So now for a day or two, they would all twitch at her, she thought in resignation.

“What are we going to do next?” she asked.

“Not a damned thing we can do but wait,” he said, still listening to the rising wind. “Wait for Brian to check in, or for Pulaski to show up with a warrant, or for Chelsky to come around and ask polite questions for twelve hours, or for Pete to make his next move.”

Twitchy, she thought. Waiting was going to be very hard.

All day Tuesday, he stayed busy doing something or other to the car in the garage; she didn't ask what. And she stayed busy doing something with apples in the kitchen; he didn't ask what. Late in the afternoon, he sniffed at the woodstove, where she was stirring a very large pot of something. “Umm,” he said, and put his arms around her, nibbled at her neck. She turned and nibbled at his earlobe. The first time she had done that, thirty years earlier, he had growled, “What the hell are you doing?” and she had said, “Stimulating an erogenous zone.” A second later, he had said, “I'll be damned!”

Now, thirty years later, he was still surprised. She pushed the kettle to the back of the stove, closed a damper most of the way, and arm in arm they wandered upstairs. Outside, the wind shrieked and the rain pelted down.

Wednesday, the cats were all snapping at one another. When Candy came in drenched, he reached for her, a humanitarian gesture—he just wanted to dry her off; she snarled and hissed. Brutus watched him through evil, slitted yellow eyes. Ashcan slinked around, hiding behind a chair, behind the couch, underfoot, whimpering. Constance snapped that the apple butter was tasteless, and she fussed around adding spices; he had to take the spark plugs out and put them back in before the car would start. The gutter had filled up with spruce needles that had blown like snow, and he had to get the ladder out and clear the channel; he came in as wet as a human could get without having been dumped in the ocean.

“That doesn't happen if you live in a decent apartment building,” he said coldly, removing layers of wet clothes.

“You're dripping on the floor,” she said, just as coldly.

They both stopped when the telephone rang and Brian's voice came on. Charlie raced to pick up the phone. Constance finished making the coffee she had started and got out the bottle of Irish.

They sat at the kitchen table when he hung up. He sipped his coffee, raised his eyebrows, saluted her with the cup, then drank again. “Ah,” he said. “Okay, first Marla,” he said then. “Chelsky and company paid a call yesterday. Stayed two hours. As soon as they left and Roy showed up, she got in the Buick and went tearing out to the interstate, down the highway to an exit with a gas station and phone, ran to the phone, then turned and got back in the car and raced home. No call. She hasn't shown her nose since.” He took another drink of the Irish coffee, savoring it. “The real scoop is on Sal Mervin,” he said then. “The guy with the novelty shop.” She nodded. “They found an empty bottle, scotch, and the story is that he drank until he passed out; then he got up to open a window later and passed out again. Trouble is, his widow says he couldn't drink more than one mixed drink or maybe two during a whole evening or he fell asleep and was out for twelve hours at least. He was on allergy medication, and that along with alcohol put him out fast. Anyway, a passing cruiser checked the mall at midnight and the window was closed, lights out.”

She said doubtfully, “He could have come awake enough to open a window? But what was the woman doing all that time in a dark shop? Sleeping?”

He gave her a look. “Come on. Try this. For some reason, Pete had to get rid of him. He goes to the shop, gives him a couple of drinks—” He ignored her skeptical look. “Anyway, Mervin passes out and Pete unlocks the back window so he can open it from outside later, and he leaves.”

“Every time you said ‘Pete,' you could have said any other name that occurred to you,” she pointed out. “What you mean was, someone did this, someone did that.”

He scowled, but she was right—it was too iffy. No stranger could have counted on Mervin staying asleep with only a drink or two in him. Would Mervin have been chummy enough with an ex-con to tell him he couldn't drink? He stood up and took his cup to refill, just coffee this time. Why hadn't Pete just hit him in the head and been done with it? It wouldn't have tied in with the serial fires, he told himself. The arson murder was meant to be laid at Charlie's door along with the others. If the trap had been sprung at Breckinridge's cabin, that would be on his head, too.

Thursday was not quite so twitchy; the wind had died down again. The cats all went outside and spent most of the day in the sun; Charlie fooled with his fly rod in the basement, and Constance pretended to answer mail, pay a few bills, but she accomplished little. The thought nagged at her: They were missing something. In the basement, Charlie thought in annoyance that there was something right over there, just out of sight; if he could turn his head fast enough, he would have it.

Chelsky called and then dropped by on Friday morning. “Just need to fill in a few details,” he said, shrugging out of a heavy plaid jacket. He had taken off his boots and left them outside the front door; he pulled on felt slippers. “March,” he said, “hard month. Too hot, too cold, blizzards, wind. You sure can't count on anything in March.”

Without comment, Charlie led him to the living room, where Chelsky took a chair close to the fire. “Nice,” he said. “Smells good in here. Apples, cinnamon, cloves. Like the apple butter we make back home.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Constance asked. “It won't take a minute.” Charlie gave her a look. She was falling for the nice “just home folk” line. Chelsky said coffee would hit the spot.

“What can I do for you?” Charlie asked brusquely.

“Reckon you could do a lot, but what you'll do is pretty much what you've already decided on.” Candy appeared and sniffed his feet, then jumped onto his lap. He stroked her. “Way I see it,” he said, gazing at the comfortable fire hissing in the fireplace, “you either started a lot of fires and you're aiming to pin them on Pete Eisenbeis or else he started them and is doing a pretty good job pinning them on you.” He glanced at Charlie; his eyes were a sparkly blue. “Mrs. Boseman says you're crazy,” he added.

“You get around,” Charlie commented.

“Yep.” He gave it two syllables. “Why don't you just fill me in on Pete, Mrs. Boseman, all of it, from day one.”

Charlie shrugged and told most of the story.

Then Chelsky started asking questions. Constance brought coffee and he added sugar and cream to his and went on asking questions. Why Eisenbeis, not one of the other cons who got out about the same time? How long did the drive to the cabin take? Had he known Boseman? How long had they been at the cabin before Breckinridge arrived? Had anyone touched anything inside the cabin? He was thorough.

In the middle of a question, which already had been asked and answered, Charlie held up his hand. “You didn't find Pete's prints, did you?”

“Nope. Not a one.” He started to say something else, but Charlie shook his head, thinking.

“How tight is that cabin?” he asked after a moment.

“Good and tight. Cold up there, windy. It's tight.”

Charlie visualized it: solid doors, all that weather stripping, storm windows, bedroom and bathroom doors closed. Now he remembered the gas stove with one burner on less than a quarter turn.

“The fireplace damper was shut down, I suppose,” he murmured.

Chelsky nodded and remained silent

“It could have been set up anytime—a week ago, a month ago, anytime since the end of January,” Charlie said at last. “Not aimed at me, but at Breckinridge.”

“Looks like it,” Chelsky agreed. “Would have passed as an accident more than likely. It would have burned to the ground, isolated like that, old wood.” His eyes were twinkling again as he asked, “Haven't been chasing around Vermont the past six weeks, have you?”

“Nope.” But Charlie was thinking. There was something, something elusive that he should have noticed.

Abruptly, Constance stood up. “If you don't need me any longer, I should put on some dinner.” She hardly waited for the agent's polite response as she hurried to the kitchen, where she stood rubbing her arms, chilled through. Step three was yet to be taken. The cabin wasn't it; that was simply opportunistic, unplanned as far as Charlie was concerned; he just happened to be on the spot. Step three had him at the center.

Chelsky stayed another half hour. As soon as he left, Charlie came to the kitchen muttering, “No one, absolutely no one believes Pete's anywhere in the state, maybe not even in the country.”

“Charlie,” Constance said from across the kitchen. Her voice was low and charged, intense. “There has to be one more fire, doesn't there?”

He stopped near the table. “Go on.”

“Breckinridge would have opened that door whether you turned up or not.”

He nodded.

“He was meant to die. But his death wouldn't have had anything to do with the serial fires. It was separate.” Step three was in the wings, she thought, planned, ready. She said, “It has to be something bigger, something so incriminating, you won't be able to get out of it. They'll arrest you. You can't prove a negative, that you didn't set the fires, and there's no one else, not really.”

She was thinking out loud, Charlie knew. Softly he said, “And then what?”

“Remember the note: ‘You will feel my pain.' Prison won't be enough. I'll be killed, or disabled.” Suddenly, she went white. “Jessica!” she whispered.

“Just sit still,” Charlie said. He had taken Constance to the living room and stirred up the fire, added a log. He felt as clammy as she did.

“She's coming home next month,” Constance said in a strained voice. “And he's so patient.” She started to get up. “We have to call her, tell her not to come.”

“We'll call her, but not at midnight, their time. What I'm going to do is make us an Irish coffee; later I'll do one of my famous omelets.” When he started for the kitchen, she got up to follow him; she stood within reach as he brewed coffee and then rooted around in the cabinet for the Irish. “You want whipped cream?” he asked. His voice had returned to normal; until that moment, he hadn't realized how forced it had been minutes ago. She shook her head.

He stopped fiddling with the Irish and cups and took her into his arms. “Ah, honey,” he whispered.

“That's the worst thing, isn't it?” she whispered back. “Having your child threatened.”

He nodded and then kissed her neck and returned to the coffee. “Let's sit down and talk it through,” he said. “We're missing something. It's nagged at me for days.”

That wasn't right, she wanted to say; they never talked it through until they had more to go on. First he had to think and think, and then they talked. She bit her lip, and they went to the living room with their Irish coffee.

“Let's start with Pete,” he said after a moment. “He's up for thirteen years, plenty of time to plan anything. Maybe she took him clippings, anything she came across concerning us.” He was thinking of the article that had appeared about Jessica when she was selected as a Rhodes Scholar. She was in Oxford, due home in April. The article had spelled it out. He shook himself. “So he gets out and two days later he turns up at Marla's house.”

“Why two days? Why not go there directly?”

“He had to collect the money and stuff.”

She shook her head. “Marla had the money. I told you. She must have been careful about how and when she spent any, but she had to have it. The television alone cost over a thousand dollars, and the custom bed, the wheelchair… . Did you look at it? It's custom-made. It will make a bed; that's why she could have Nathan in it from morning until evening. And that sweater.”

“Breckinridge? He has money.”

“Some of that stuff predates him. Just think of her other expenses, insurance for two cars, utilities. Heating that house must run over two hundred a month. She had to have the money, Charlie. She only works four or five days a month, remember? Then one day in New York. She simply isn't handling the kind of jewelry that would bring in that much money with so little effort.”