Wicked Fix (8 page)

"But you know where he was?" I put in worriedly.

Because if he did know and hadn't said so, it must

have been somewhere--

"In the cemetery," Sam said miserably.

--bad.

He sighed again. "I went out on my bike twice, see.

And the second time, I rode through Hillside Cemetery.

Dad was on one of the benches."

"Are you sure it was your father? It was dark."

Ellie cracked two eggs expertly, reserving a little

white for the glaze and beating the rest into the bowl

with some milk. In the bowl already were the flour,

sugar, and butter, and the Bakewell Cream powder,

which as a substitute for ordinary baking powder is

like using rocket fuel instead of gasoline.

"Yeah," Sam said, "I'm sure. He didn't speak,

though, so I guessed he wanted to be let alone. So," he

shrugged, "I did."

"Move over," Ellie said, shooing him to the side.

Sam pushed the Ouija board in its box and the Morse

book out of her way, as she deftly floured her hands

and kneaded the scone batter twenty times, then flattened

it into a pancake shape on the table.

"So you went home," she said. "Back to Victor's, I

mean."

He nodded, watching her cut the pancake into a

dozen wedges, then transfer the wedges to a baking

sheet. Finally she spread them with beaten egg white

and drizzled granulated sugar between her fingers until

the sugar stopped soaking into the egg white.

"Was Reuben's body already there, by any

chance?" Popping the baking sheet into the oven, she

dusted her hands together briskly and competently. I

took her point: Although the blood had indeed seemed

reasonably fresh when we found him, he could have

been there a while.

"I don't know. I wasn't looking for it," Sam said.

Absently, he opened the Ouija board box, slid the

planchette dejectedly over the varnished surface of the

board. It was elaborately painted in crisp, glossy black,

the standard numerals and letters spread out across it.

The words 'Yes and No were displayed in the upper

left-and-right-hand corners.

"I was wishing Dad would call me over," he said,

riddling with the planchette. "But he didn't, and then I

was past him. I never looked at the gate."

The planchette slipped off the edge of the table and

fell to the floor; Monday came over and sniffed suspiciously

at it.

Sam picked it up again. "It felt lousy, you know?

Not being able to help him. But he never does. Let me

help him, I mean. And now if I have to say where he

was when I saw him last night ..."

"No one has asked you," Ellie said. "And I hope

you're not thinking of volunteering any information

before it's requested."

We sat in glum silence until the oven timer's brr

ring! interrupted my musing: Victor had bathed that

morning, so thoroughly that to anyone who didn't

know him it would look as if he'd been trying to wash

something off.

Even more, I mean, than usual. Ellie took the

cream scones from the oven. "So the next time you

knew where your father was, he was here? This morning?"

But Sam shook his head again. "After I went to

bed, I heard him. It was getting light out, so it must

have been around five. I heard the shower run, and

after that he did a load of laundry."

Oh, for heaven's sake. Most of the time, Victor's

idea of doing laundry was bundling it up for the maid

to take. He'd hired a cleaning person from town three

days a week, and a high-school kid to do his yard

work, the minute he'd arrived in Eastport.

And now suddenly he was Holly Homemaker.

"What about the jacket he was wearing, and the

slacks he had on?" Ellie inquired acutely. "Have you

seen those?"

"Uh-uh," Sam replied. "But ..."

His face fell further. "But he took the trash out. I

saw a fresh bag in the bin this morning. He'd put the

top back on the bin but he hadn't tied it down, which

was why I noticed."

A grin lit his face briefly. "Dad still thinks skunks

won't eat his trash if he just disapproves of them hard

enough."

Then the seriousness of the situation overtook him

again.

"Anyway, I had to shove the bag farther down in

the bin, so I could get the top shut. And it was soft," he

finished in a tone of terminal glumness. "Like maybe

there were clothes inside it."

He thought for a minute. "I could call Charlie

Martin. Ask him to pick up the trash now instead of

waiting for our regular day."

Ellie split a scone, buttered it, and put it in front of

him.

"He will, you know," Sam finished earnestly to

me. "He will, if I call and ask him."

But as Sam said this, a rumbling sound came from

the street. I knew it well: it was the sound I heard each

Thursday morning, when once again I had forgotten to

put out my own trash and had to scramble to get the

cans lugged out to the sidewalk, and the wastebaskets

emptied too, if I was lucky.

Opening the back door, I watched the garbage

truck roll by: red cab, big bull moose painted in green

on the white compactor.

And today wasn't Thursday. "Looks like some

helpful person already has. Called him, I mean."

Charlie swung out and started up the driveway to

the trash bin, a low, lean-to structure built onto the

shed out back of Victor's house. He was halfway there

when the Maine State Police squad car rolled to the

curb. Two officers got out and waved him over.

I saw Charlie glance at my house as he listened to

the officers. Then I closed the door so I wouldn't have

to see any more.

"Look," I told Sam. "Whatever trouble your dad's

in, the way to help him is not by lying or trying to

cover anything up."

He listened disconsolately. Meanwhile in my head

an awful refrain was repeating itself: motive, method,

opportunity. I was pretty sure the state cops knew that

old song, too.

And from what I could tell, Victor had just spent

the night putting together a new arrangement for it.

"So," I told Sam, "you say nothing unless you're

questioned by somebody who has the authority to do

it. And even then, say you have to ask your mother

before you can answer. Got it so far?"

Sam nodded gratefully. Ordinarily, he doesn't like

asking my permission to do anything, regarding it as an

outworn, childhood habit that ought to be put behind

him, like a snake's skin. But this time he looked relieved.

"Tell the truth," I continued. "But no more than

you've been asked."

He nodded some more, so woebegone I almost

wished for a hint of the bad old days: teenaged anger

and open defiance.

But not quite. "Got it?" I emphasized.

"Uh-huh," Sam said. "I know," he went on earnestly,

"about Dad's trouble with Tate. Dad didn't

want Tate telling that he'd gotten sued in New York.

He told me he knew people here would find out

eventually. But he wanted them to know him better, kind of

get used to him, you know. Before they heard about it.

He was real worried about it."

His shoulders slumped. "I won't say that to anyone

but you two, though. Unless," he added sorrowfully,

"the police ask."

Typical Victor: knee-jerk secretiveness, bunker

mentality. He'd have kept his New York troubles under

wraps forever if he could, and never mind what he'd

told Sam he was going to do about it; worrying about

looking bad was one of Victor's main ways of not worrying

about being bad.

Typical Reuben Tate, too, from what I'd been hearing:

playing into Victor's psychology that way. Sam got

up, closed the Ouija box, and took it and the blue

covered Morse code book with him.

"Mom, how could they have arrested him? He's

not guilty. He couldn't have done it. He's not ..."

Sam paused, swallowed hard. "He's not violent.

Anymore."

"Right," I said, knowing that we were remembering

the same incident. But that was from the really bad

old days, and it was over. I put my hand on his arm,

made my voice sound confident.

"His talk about threatening Reuben, even if he did

say that stuff, it was just talk. Don't worry about it too

much. Things are going to be a little rough for a while,

but I'm certain that this will all get straightened out

just fine."

Sam met my gaze, comforted for a moment. But

then his face changed, as he realized that I was lying.

That Victor was innocent of Tate's murder I was

certain; I knew Victor too well. It was the getting

things straightened out part I wasn't sure of, because

what I couldn't come up with was the answer to one

simple question:

Neither Ellie nor I had said anything about Reuben

Tate when we'd arrived home from the cemetery to

find Victor sitting in my kitchen.

Arnold hadn't mentioned Tate either when he'd

called Victor earlier, because at that point he hadn't

heard.

So how had Victor known that Reuben was dead?

The question of hauntedness was a recurring

one in our old house: cold spots on the

stairs, strange noises in the attic, doors that

opened or closed with odd, mischievous regularity.

Once I came down in the morning to find a set

of steak knives, their blades all bent and twisted, inside

the washing machine.

So having a Ouija board around the place just

seemed to me like begging for trouble, but Sam was

enthralled with the thing. He took it into the dining

room and sat brooding over it, as if it might reveal

some hidden secret to him.

"Sam," I said. "It's supposed to take at least two

people to get any action out it."

Live people, I meant, and not that I wanted any

action; the reverse, in fact, unless the dratted thing decided

to levitate itself into the trash. The astral plane

had been pretty quiet on our part of Key Street in recent