Wreck the Halls (10 page)

But then there was the story of Job: occasionally, bad stuff just poured down on someone who didn’t deserve it. That, Clarissa also liked to say, was when her job got interesting.

“Hey,” she said. I turned on the stairs. She stood at the top of them. “Call her lawyer.”

And at my puzzled look: “They’ll appoint Faye Anne an attorney if they haven’t already. I’ll find out who it is and tell him—or her, if it's a her—to expect to hear from you.”

“Clarissa, thanks. But I thought you thought…”

“I do. You should stay out of it. And yes, I do know about the door, the wine bottles, and the rest. Bob told me. And if I were a prosecutor I could knock it all down. House of cards.”

“But… then, why?”

“Because I used to try to make those dogs of my uncle's into pets. Make them learn tricks. Jake, have you ever tried teaching a beagle to do anything buthunt?”

Oh.

“The vet says
she's fine,” Sam called from the passenger seat of Tommy Pockets’ old jalopy—raccoon tails, a jury-rigged muffler, and a thrillingly penetrating oo-ooh-gah! horn—as they pulled rumblingly up alongside me on Key Street.

Monday, he meant; he’d taken the dog for her check up so I could go see Clarissa. Now the animal lolled happily in Tommy's backseat: head out the window, eyes bright and ears alert. Not a care in the world.

“Woof,” I said to her, reassured; the vet on the mainland worked out of an old blue sheet-metal quonset building whose appearance didn’t inspire confidence. But the vet did.

“Come on, dog,” I said, snapping her leash on. Tommy's
car horn oo-ooAZ-gahed as they pulled away with a bang of backfire and a burst of tailpipe smoke.

The rest of the way up Key Street was two steps forward and one step back, the sky brilliant blue and the ice on the sidewalk watery-slick. But for the moment I hardly minded; with Monday judged healthy and me not in immediate danger of prosecution, the cold fresh air tasted sweet as spring water.

Monday frisked along beside me, past the red-brick library flaunting its green cupola against the sky, its brass weathervane glinting. Behind it in Library Park the bandstand rose from the snow, white on white, its latticework crisply perfect.

At the top of the hill I turned to gaze down at the harbor where the boat slips had been empty since dawn; scalloping is daylight work, and with the fishing regulations so picky and the winter day so short, the men took advantage of every minute.

George was out there helping to haul the shellfish, which meant we’d be able to have a nice casserole of them soon: butter and breadcrumbs, white wine, and presto! instant ambrosia. The notion cheered me further, as did the scarlet-ribboned wreaths and garlands and the pinecone-studded swags at every door and window on Key Street. Even Victor's place on the corner, its iron scrollwork fence a black ink-sketch on the snow and its oil-fired furnace chimney puffing a spiral of pale smoke like a genie being let out of a bottle, gleamed in the chilly, salt water-scented winter sun.

But inside my house, Monday sank once more with a glum oomph into her dog bed, her face a mask of canine tragedy and her eyes accusing. You haven’t killed the enemy that's scaring my wits out, her look said. And although for now she accepted the substitute I offered—a dog biscuit—I knew sooner or later I was going to have to do battle. But against what?

On the other hand, I did have a fresh supply of plastic sheeting. And putting some on the windows might help lower the heat bill while working on the cellar steps would not, unless we all decided to live down there huddled next to the furnace.

So after washing my hands I got out the roll of plastic, which I’d used only for true cold emergencies in previous years: ugly, thick, and milky-opaque. The first step, caulking the spaces between the sashes and the sill, went quickly. Next came what I once thought was the tricky part: getting the plastic up.

Tricky, that is, until I learned about double-sided tape. Around the window: top, sides, and bottom, making sure first to pull a corner tab of the tape's backing material; it's a hint I learned while teetering at the top of a tall stepladder, trying to separate the backing material from the sticky part. Once the tape was mounted, I pulled the backing off: zip, zop.

Then, struggling a little but getting it up there finally, I hung the plastic sheet. Suddenly the view through the window was grey and blurry as if through an out-of-focus camera. You can get clear plastic for about the same price as the heating fuel you’ll save on, which pretty much moots the whole operation, it seems to me. Sighing, I resigned myself to seeing my own backyard again sometime in summer, and I added copper weatherstripping to the list in my head, too. It was expensive, but judging by the windchill in here, it was also essential.

Monday whimpered, gazing at the back door. “Oh, okay,” I said, and she leapt up, so eager to get back outside again that I thought if she had one of those tramp's bundles and could sling it over her shoulder, she’d run away from home.

Which was a little like what I felt like doing, too, now that I’d had time to think. No one knew yet about the disaster over at Faye Anne's the night before. But Kenty

Dalrymple had almost surely observed major components of it.

And would talk about it. Once a noted gardening writer who’d had her own program on public TV, Kenty was now a frail semi-invalid, living alone with her books and plants. So it was hard to begrudge her the gossipy conversations that gave her such pleasure.

Still, right now I wished she enjoyed them a little less avidly. By this evening my name—linked with Peter's, curse the luck—would be featuring prominently in them, I felt certain.

As if to underline this, the moment I got outside, Peter's old Ford turned onto Key Street. My efforts to blend invisibly with the snowbanks were fruitless; the car slowed. Behind the wheel, Peter wore a tan leather jacket and cream scarf and looked as usual like the man most likely to be depicted on the cover of a romance novel. And there was— surprise—a woman with him.

“Jacobia, what a ghastly experience, finding Merle. It must have been an awful shock,” Melinda Devine gushed, leaning over to search me avidly for hoped-for signs of psychological trauma. “Was it very terrible?”

If it had been, Melinda would simply have loved it to bits. A tiny, wiry woman of thirty or so, she wore a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and black slacks, her hair swept up and sprayed into a gleaming brunette helmet. No coat; she always said if your personality was warm enough, you didn’t need one.

“Hi, Melinda,” I said. “I’m fine, thanks. Peter, what can I do for you?”

I made my tone so businesslike that Monday glanced up, thinking I’d uttered an obedience command. But I had a reason: After Bob Arnold had discovered us in Faye Anne's kitchen, Peter had promptly decided the whole thing was our idea: Ellie's and mine.

“Listen, about last night,” he said uncomfortably. “I don’t want to be involved in any of that, anymore. I want you to drop it.”

“Really.” I kept looking at him, thinking about how nice it must be to run the world. Or to believe you did.

“You’re just going to make things worse,” he told me. Melinda appeared fascinated. “I want you to stop.”

“Such a loss,” she mourned transparently. “Faye Anne was a great asset to the garden club.”

By which she meant the one she ran: there were two garden clubs in Eastport. The official one held its meetings in the gloriously restored Gerrold Bannister house, now home to popular children's book author Sylvia Harrington, on Boynton Street. Sylvia had put in formal gardens, espaliered fruit trees, and a topiary menagerie, to create the perfect setting for the official club's officers, agenda, regular educational speakers, garden-tour program, and hybridizing projects.

The other club, its membership consisting mostly of people whom the official one had jettisoned, was Melinda's.

“Why, just the other night we were saying at the meeting how much we missed Faye Anne,” Melinda said. “Although we missed you, too, of course, Peter,” she added with a sly glance at him. She wasn’t even shivering, although it was so cold I felt that if I breathed in too fast my teeth might shatter.

The garden club schism began when Melinda announced she didn’t like being pushed around by the first club's leadership. Translation: she wanted to do the pushing around herself. Only Ellie belonged to both clubs. But then, Ellie could bring peace to the Gaza Strip.

“I even called her right from the meeting,” Melinda said, “in case she needed a ride. But of course Merle answered. He said Faye Anne wasn’t home. And I feel awful about it now, of course.”

She pulled down the windshield visor, applied clear lip
gloss in its little mirror, and adjusted the long, gold-fringed paisley scarf she always wore. All to demonstrate, I supposed, just how awful she felt.

Peter said to me: “You leave me out of it. I mean it, I’d better not hear my name mentioned in this anymore. I can get a lawyer, too, you know.”

Interesting, since I’d left Clarissa's office so recently. Either Peter was psychic or Faye Anne wasn’t the only one he was keeping tabs on. Also, what did he think he needed a lawyer for?

Then the light dawned: I knew what Melinda had meant by her sly remark. “Maybe you should get a lawyer anyway,” I said, and noted his anxious flinch.

Beside him, Melinda simpered prettily. “Peter's helping me set up my new computer,” she said, as usual turning the conversation back to her own concerns. “We’re going to do it now, and I’m going to address all my holiday cards electronically.”

We were saying at the meeting how much we missed Faye Anne…. and you too, Peter. Melinda meant that Peter and Faye Anne had been together, on the night of Merle's death. Her comment, light as the flick of a whip, had been aimed at him. And knowing Melinda—her motto was, why bother having it if you can’t flaunt it?—I came to a simple-arithmetic conclusion:

Melinda was Peter's other current girlfriend, the second-stringer everyone knew he always had. Now she’d moved up to first place without wasting a bit of time, and to show how secure she felt in her new position, she’d delivered her little jab. Not realizing, perhaps, just how sharply pointed it was.

Or maybe she had. Melinda could be as reckless as a child, and as heedless of the mischief she created. I considered telling her that before her computer would spit out holiday
greetings, she would have to type the recipients’ names and addresses in.

But let Melinda learn that, I decided, for herself. Besides, who wants a computer-printed holiday card?

“Anyway, Peter,” I said, “if you do end up wanting a lawyer don’t bother asking Clarissa Arnold. She's already too busy. I just saw her, and—oh, but you already know that, don’t you?” I tipped my head in pretended thought. “Funny, I didn’t see you. But I guess you’re pretty good at spying on people without their knowing it, huh? Following them around, maybe watching them with binoculars. The way you told Ellie and me that you’d been watching Faye Anne.”

Peter's mouth moved but no sound came out.

“Why, Peter,” Melinda breathed, “you naughty boy.” She looked at me, a bright note of query in her eyes.

But I wasn’t giving her anything. “ ’Bye, Melinda,” I said as they drove away down the ice-packed street: good riddance.

Still, I didn’t like seeing her going off with him. Melinda was shallow and manipulative, and she took a greedy, unseemly interest in the misfortunes of others. Cheap, too: the previous summer she’d gotten a town librarian fired on account of a quiet romance with a Bangor book salesman. “Conflict of interest,” Melinda had trumpeted, when in fact her campaign was retaliation for the librarian's not voiding her sky-high overdue fines.

She wasn’t all bad, though. She could work like a horse; Ellie said refreshments at the splinter-group garden club meetings were like champagne suppers. When Melinda said she would do something, she did it come hell or hibiscus, as Sam used to say.

And she was vulnerable in the way the truly oversized ego can be: the notion that she might ever come to harm never crossed Melinda's mind, I felt confident.

So I made a mental note to call her later; a word to the
wise. Or unwise. Then I turned, meaning to head indoors; the wind had shifted and a breeze knifing in off the water made the sunshine little more than window dressing. But Monday yanked the leash, sniffing the air as if any minute she might meet up with a passel of cats. And Peter Christie had gotten my dander up with his impertinent I wants.

I wanted something, too: to be shut of this whole business. Even Ellie, surely, must know now that it was useless.

But before I could put Faye Anne Carmody's troubles out of mind altogether, there was a final question I needed to ask. And Kenty Dalrymple, bless her nosy heart, might have the answer.

A few cold blocks later I reached Kenty's cottage on High Street and knocked. She opened the door instantly as if she’d been waiting for me, hoping I would arrive.

Or that someone would.

Chapter 5

I
don’t want to talk about it. It's none of my business
,” Kenty Dalrymple declared, closing the door behind me.

But Kenty had something she wanted to talk about, all right; it was in her expression and the way she seized my jacket, hanging it hurriedly on the hall coat tree as if she feared that I might go away again before she could unburden herself.

Outside, a white Channel 7 van sporting the logo of the Bangor station and the familiar peacock of the national network had slowed in front of the Carmody house as I climbed Kenty's front steps. Her lips tightening, Kenty peeked past the curtains at the parlor window. “Good, they’ve moved on,” she said with a frown.

Which I thought was odd. I’d have thought she might like getting attention from newspeople, especially since she had been in the television business herself, once. But her reaction to the news van wasn’t as odd as what came next.

It started out straightforwardly enough: “Good doggy,” she said to Monday, whose worried look faded as she determined that no enemies lurked in Kenty's furniture as they apparently did in mine.