by Justin Scott
When I saw the flow of white, I sank to the wet grass and crawled to the edge of the garden and looked down. Rose perfume lifted from its depths and waxy white impatiens lined the paths, glowing like footlights. On a bench in the middle sat Mrs. King in a long, white nightgown. From the shadows materialized a low, bulky shape. A dog, I wondered. No. It was human, creeping along the grass path. Mrs. King gasped. It lunged at her feet.
“Madam!”
“Jenkins, get up.”
Head bowed in rigid silhouette, he asked, “Can Madam forgive the intrusion? The grass is wet. I’ve brought Madam little boots. Shall I put them on for Madam?”
It was awhile before she repeated, “Get up!”
Jenkins sprang upright, only to bow again with the elaborate dignity of a functioning psychotic. Mrs. King sounded used to it. “Thank you, Jenkins. Go in the house.”
“Will Madam be safe alone here in the dark?”
“Perfectly, Jenkins. Good night.”
“Shall I carry Madam’s shoes?”
“Yes, here. Thank you.”
“Madam.”
Clutching her shoes to his face, the butler backed into the dark, backed up the garden stairs, and marched stiffly toward the distant loom of the house.
Mrs. King settled back with a sigh. She studied the starry sky. She cupped her watch. After awhile, I saw a tall figure coming across the lawn. More footwear? Glancing over his shoulder, he scuttled down the stone steps and made his way familiarly, cutting a dark silhouette against the glow of the white impatiens that lined the path to Mrs. King’s bench. They embraced. I heard whispers, then her voice, growing urgent, “You must stand up to him. You must. For me. And for you. For us.”
To the muffled reply, she said, “Be brave.”
Silence. Then she said, “I can’t wait that long. He’s making too many mistakes. I want to settle before he’s ruined.”
A muffled reply. It sounded like a plea.
Mrs. King said, “Yes. I love you, too. More than anything. You’ve saved my life.”
Stand up and kiss her, I thought. Let me see your face. But instead of him standing up, she sank back on the bench and tugged him on top of her.
I debated crawling closer; this was turning a bit voyeuristic for my taste. Mrs. King saved me the trouble with a joyous, “Oh Bert!”
I got out of there, retraced my route to the car, screwed a flat-fixer aerosol can to my alibi tire, and drove home. Bert cuckolding his host and boss was no surprise. Jenkins worshipping her feet was. And though I couldn’t see how the knowledge would get Mr. Butler out of jail, it sounded like Mrs. King had lost faith in her husband’s career.
Chapter 16
There were two messages on my answering machine. The first from Mr. Butler: “Ben? You there? Ben? Jesus. I gotta see you. I’m goin’ nuts in here.”
The second was unusual. Connie didn’t like answering machines. “Benjamin. This is your Aunt Connie. Please call me the instant you get this message.”
Thoroughly spooked by the time bomb Josh Wiggens had lodged in my brain, I bolted out of the house and raced across the street. Her place was dark except for a light around the side, spilling from the kitchen door. A china cup and saucer sat on the big, round wooden table. She wouldn’t use a mug, wouldn’t allow any in the house. “Connie?”
To my immense relief, she came shuffling down the pantry hall, dressed for bed in a night cap, a high-necked flannel robe, and slippers she’d gotten for free on an airplane.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
I sat down heavily. “Where were you?”
“In the facilities, where do you think I was?”
While direct, even blunt in important matters, she was raised genteelly early in the previous century. “Difficulties” is her polite word for impending bankruptcy, “festivities” for lovemaking. While a dog chasing a raccoon through her delphiniums would call forth a furious, “Oh shoot!”
“Your message sounded important.”
“Farmer Butler telephoned from the jailhouse. He’s terribly upset.”
“Why did he call you?”
“He said you didn’t return his call.”
“I just got his message.”
“Then what are you sitting there for?” She leveled an imperious finger at the rotary dial telephone.
The night man at the county jail said it was way past lights out. Compared to most of the prisoners held for trial or sobering up, however, the farmer must have been a pleasant change, and the guard agreed to pass a message that I’d visit in the morning.
“Appreciate that. Just please don’t wake him.”
“He’s wide awake. He don’t sleep none.”
“Maybe I could talk to him now?”
“Sorry. That I can’t do.”
Suddenly I heard metal banging. Then Mr. Butler shouting, “That for me? That for me?”
“Pipe down in there,” the guard roared.
I said, “Let me talk to him.”
“No way.”
“Hey, is that for me?”
I said, “Don’t hang up. Let me talk to him, I’ll calm him down for you.”
“Hold on.”
It took a few minutes. I heard the cell door clang, and the guard warning him, “Hold still!”
“You don’t got to cuff me, man. I’m just—”
“Hold still!…Okay. Two minutes.”
“Ben?”
“Right here, Mr. Butler.”
“Ben. I gotta get out of here. I’m going crazy.”
***
I tried to talk him down, but our two minutes were soon up and I could hear him struggling with the guard. I called, “I’ll see you in the morning, I’ll see you in the morning,” until the phone went dead.
Connie touched my shoulder. “Your hands are shaking.”
“Got any more cocoa?”
She lit the stove, a Wel-Maid gas range she had installed the year they paved Main Street. “Why is he calling you, Ben?”
“Mainly because he doesn’t know who else to call.”
“Whom else.”
“Whom else. He was alone all those years, then suddenly he had Dicky back in a way he’d never had him before, working the farm. I think he was just getting over the habit of being alone, when suddenly he’s really alone and in trouble.”
I settled onto a sturdy kitchen chair and tried to draw peace from the old walls. When, ultimately, Connie’s home becomes the Newbury Historical Society’s museum, about all they will have to do is hang out a sign that says, Museum. Any room in the house could establish a To-The-Trade-Only dealer on Bleecker Street: Chinese antiques plundered by Constantine Abbott’s sea captains; European purchased by his canal builder, whaler, and railroad tycoon descendants; Americana inherited as the bloodlines thinned, narrowing down to this last vigorous but childless old lady.
My house—my mother’s house, that is—was actually much older, but events seemed bigger in Connie’s mansion. And there’s more continuity: Abbott House had twice passed out of the family when financial panics had driven merchant ancestors back to farming or the ministry; no one but Connie’s Abbotts had ever slept under this roof. At this table their countless cooks and housekeepers had planned a hundred thousand meals. Abbott women, their nieces and their neighbors had rolled bandages for the Civil War. The Newbury Hunt had gathered for stirrup cups and scones pulled fresh from the iron doors that studded the brick fireplace.
Connie asked, “Doesn’t the insufferable Ira still handle his affairs?”
“Ira used to get Dicky out of trouble, which I never understood. He’s not exactly Attorney Charitable.”
“Guilt,” said Connie. “Ira Roth was a reserve officer after Korea. When he was called up for Vietnam, it would have meant sacrificing his practice, so he weaseled out of it, somehow. Helping a wounded war hero was his penance.”
“Ira’s tied up with a trial, so he han
ded Mr. Butler off to Tim Hall.”
“Tim is coming along, though hardly the man his father was.”
“Mr. Butler embraces your prejudices. Darned fool keeps things from Tim.”
“It’s a good thing you’ve stepped in.” Connie studied her hands a moment. They were wrinkled, of course, but remarkably long and elegant. “If raising bond is a problem perhaps I can help.”
“It’s two million dollars, Connie. The bondsmen won’t touch it with a rake.”
“Two million?”
“Accessory’s a very heavy charge. Plus, the state’s attorney convinced the magistrate he’s dangerous. Which he isn’t.”
“He was a Special Forces soldier.”
“He hasn’t blown up anything since the war except ledge and tree stumps.”
“But he knows how.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on the side of sanity,” she said tartly. “And it seems to me you could use a devil’s advocate.”
“I’ll tell you what, Devil. Just between you, me and the lamppost.”
“I’ve not heard that expression in years.”
“Heard it just the other night at the Drover.”
“From Ms. Devlin?”
“How—?” Pinkerton Investigation Services and Kroll Associates combined couldn’t match her sources when it came to keeping track of me.
“Lamppost?” she prompted.
“When the dam blew? My first thought was Mr. Butler did it.”
“You see?”
“I’m having second thoughts. In fact…” I studied the floor. The linoleum, laid shortly after the material was invented, was holding up nicely thanks to weekly waxing and a light tread. Even the Kitchen-Aid dishwasher was antique. The Smithsonian has offered Connie a new one if they could display hers in Washington.
“In fact what?”
“I’m not even sure Dicky did it.” I looked at Connie to gauge her reaction. Skeptical. Head cocked like a blue jay watching a cat yawn.
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s felt off base to me from the second I found Dicky dead. I still can’t put my finger on it. But aside from that, when I add up how drunk Josie said—”
“Josie?”
“Jervis.”
“Good lord,” Connie shuddered.
“Gwen’s daughter.”
“I know she’s Gwen’s daughter. I had blotted from my mind that they keep reproducing.”
“Josie’s all right.”
“Yes, I take that back. She’s doing nicely in the Army. What does Josie have to do with Dicky Butler?”
I explained—skimming over the nitty gritty—that Josie had told me he was dead drunk, how they had planned a picnic that afternoon, and that he was wearing his favorite cowboy boots.
“But if he was drunk, how did he do it? Can you imagine him lugging the dynamite all the way down the hill and around the lake? Those boxes run fifty pounds apiece.”
Connie thought on that. “He could have moved the dynamite the night before, in the dark. Before he went carousing with Josie. That would explain why he wasn’t seen. When he came home inebriated, he simply staggered down to the dam to ignite the explosives. Which would explain, also, the mistake that killed him.” She crossed her arms in minor triumph.
“Except for two things.”
“Which are?”
“One I can’t put my finger on. Something about his body.”
“What’s the other?”
“Dynamite wasn’t Dicky’s way. He was a violent brawler, not a schemer. He’d wade in swinging.”
“Not likely with all the guards Henry King has hired.”
“Guards wouldn’t scare him. He’d run ’em over with his truck if he were hellbent to get his hands on King.”
“Benjamin, you’ve always been drawn to the worst crowd.”
“Besides, where were the guards when he staggered down to light the fuse?”
Connie thought a moment. “I know that property. The woodlots connect. Or at least they used to.” She was a major landholder, as well as a force in the Newbury Land Trust that snatched woods and hayfields from the jaws of developers. “Unless Henry King has leveled his for a polo field.”
“They still connect.”
“Well, the woods would skirt the lower side of the lake, wouldn’t they? Obviously, Dicky Butler could have done it.” She looked at the clock and covered a yawn. “Give Mr. Butler my best wishes when you see him tomorrow.” She had packed him a shopping bag with pickled sausage and jams and fruits from her garden.
“Incidentally, are you aware little Alison wants a cat?”
“Why don’t you lend her yours?”
“That is not at all funny, Benjamin.”
Her last cat, Mehitabel, occupied a place of honor in her upstairs sitting room, thanks to the art of taxidermy.
***
It had been a while since Mr. Butler had washed his hair, and it hung in lanky strands. His skin was gray, despite years of wind- and sunburn. In his county-lockup running suit he looked like some poor derelict the Salvation Army had trolled out of the gutter, and he welcomed me to the visitor’s room with a grateful smile that tore my heart.
I told him about Scooter and Eleanor seeing his tractor from the balloon. And the fact that the Chevalley boys had witnessed him freeing the calf. He listened like a man whose mind was somewhere on a hilltop.
“I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Butler, but I took the liberty of asking Henry King to pay for your legal defense.”
I expected resistance and maybe anger. He only said, matter-of-factly, “He won’t.”
“My theory is he won’t have to. The offer alone should be enough to make the state’s attorney rethink his case.”
“I warned King,” Mr. Butler said.
“Warned him? Warned him what?”
“If he wouldn’t help then, he’s not going to help for free.”
“Warned him what?”
“What I tried to tell you and you wouldn’t let me.”
“Which was?”
“How I knew for sure it wasn’t Dicky. I told King I’d tell the troopers if he didn’t spring me.”
“You threatened him?”
“Blackmail. Which it was.”
“I don’t follow you,” I said gently. “Let’s go back to how did you know for sure that Dicky didn’t blow King’s dam.”
“I put the dynamite in King’s dam.”
***
Just like Josie Jervis had called it.
But I still had trouble believing my ears. And didn’t want to.
He explained, drily, almost casually: “Rigged it to detonate from the payphone in the Newbury General Store.”
I looked into his crazy eyes, and wondered what deal Tim and I and Ira Roth could work to keep the poor guy from spending the rest of his life behind bars. We had to keep him off the witness stand. But first, I had to persuade him not to blab this lunacy to the cops.
“Mr. Butler, you weren’t at the general store. You were on your tractor.”
“King took it out,” he said.
“What?”
“King’s security people found my dynamite and removed it.”
“Wait, wait. You say you planted the dynamite and before you could detonate it King’s people took it out?”
“Yup.”
“Mind telling me how you know they removed your explosives?”
“Because the morning of the party, when I got back from the General Store the lake was still there.”
For a farmer used to the sky overhead, daylight and weather—an independent man who never stood on line or waited in crowds—being locked up had to be particularly disorienting. “Isn’t disarming explosives specialized work? A bomb squad job?”
Mr. Butler pulled a face. “I didn’t booby-trap it. I wasn’t trying to kill anybody. Besides, those aren’t rent-a-cops protecting him. He’
s got top government security agents. Special ops guys.”
I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the security agents. If King could afford to keep a former secretary of state and a retired CIA agent around the house, surely he could afford better than my numskull cousins. But wouldn’t even “top” agents call the bomb squad?
“Let me ask you this: then why did it blow up at the party?”
“They put it back.”
“They put it back?”
“Re-armed it.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To cover up that they killed Dicky.”
Oh, boy, I thought. But ever the optimist: at least we had the makings of an insanity plea.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t.” Actually, my problem was I might believe half his story. The first half. Maybe he did plant the dynamite. But the ATF hadn’t found any wiring or remotes, which led me to speculate he had used some kind of slow fuse he’d learned in Special Forces. Then something went wrong, maybe water got in and delayed it. Whatever, his son had had the bad luck to pass out under the dam when it did go off. Just like Josie Jervis said.
“Tell me about the fuse.”
“Fuse? Why would I use a fuse? Why the hell would I take a chance lighting a goddammed fuse when I could fire her off from the General Store?”
“Why the General Store?”
“Payphone. They could back-trace a call from my own phone.”
Play it as if he weren’t nuts, I told myself, see what occurs in his alternate logic. “Didn’t you want to watch?”
“I didn’t have to watch it go boom,” Mr. Butler said scornfully. “By the time I drove home the ’sucker’s lake would be history. And another thing, do you seriously think I’d blow that dam during a party? What if somebody was walking on it?”
Or sleeping under it.
He had it all figured out. Most, if not all, wasn’t true, of course. But if he had accidentally killed his son, then he had to have a story he could live with. A horrible coincidence—The Will of God, our Puritan fathers would say—but the man needed a story. Not to get out of jail, but to absolve himself of his son’s death.
“Why would King kill Dicky?”
“I already told you that.”
“Tell me again.”
“To get my farm.”