FrostLine

by Justin Scott

  They were actually pairs of boxes, stacked two-high on either side of the velvet couch. I started to remove a lamp so I could open the top. Then I noticed that the front had duct tape along the bottom edge. It made a hinge, in fact, allowing the front of the box to swing down like a door. I slipped my fingernails into the joint and started to pull, when I felt the floor move under my knees.

  The rain had stopped. A heavy man had stepped into the trailer. A loud metallic clatter sounded exactly like a big-bore shotgun shell being chambered.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Dennis. Albert was behind him, still on the steps, his shotgun pointed skyward. Dennis’—a semi-automatic pump job—was pointed way too close in my direction.

  “Hey! Dennis, don’t point that gun at me.”

  “What are you doing, Ben?”

  “I’m looking what’s inside this box,” I said.

  “Ben, don’t do that,” he said, and his shotgun drifted closer.

  It was a little early in the morning for them to be drunk. But Albert belched and I realized that for them it was still late last night. Worse, they looked scared. What the two of them high as kites, scared, and armed might egg each other into, I didn’t want to guess.

  I said, “I am standing up, carefully.”

  “Don’t move.”

  “I won’t move.”

  Dennis said, “Check out if he took anything.”

  Albert squeezed past him, gun now pointed at the ceiling, and lumbered down the hall to the bedrooms. He came back almost immediately. “Naw, he didn’t go in there.”

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s ask him.”

  “What are you doing here, Ben?”

  It was difficult to see them as comical while they were holding pump shotguns.

  “Guys, I really think you ought to put down the guns before somebody gets hurt.”

  “You!” Dennis bellowed. “Not somebody.”

  “You can’t shoot me in your mom’s living room. You’ll mess the whole place up.”

  Dennis proved a strategist. “Yeah, but what if we thought you was a burglar?”

  “Your mom would still be pissed. And so would the cops. You’re not allowed to shoot burglars. Come on, guys. Whatever you got in that box isn’t worth killing me for.”

  Albert said, “I don’t want to get caught.”

  “You will get caught,” I told them. “Count on it.”

  They looked at each other, then stared at the dynamite boxes. “They’ll fire us.”

  “Why will they fire you?” I asked.

  “They’ll take back the truck,” Albert said mournfully.

  “Why would they take back the truck?”

  “You son of a bitch,” said Dennis. “It’s all your fault.” He cocked his gun angrily and the shell he had chambered previously went flying across the room and knocked a knockoff Hummel from the shelf.

  “Jesus Christ! Mom’ll kill us.”

  “Ben made me do it.”

  “It didn’t break,” I soothed. “Look! It landed on the rug. It’s okay.”

  “Where?”

  “Rolled behind the couch,” I told them.

  They lumbered into the room, crouched down on hands and knees like hippos in mud, and felt behind the couch. “Oh, no.” Dennis held up a coyly smiling fisherman’s head. “It busted.”

  “I misled you,” I said, engaging the safety as I picked up the shotgun he had laid on the carpet. Albert reached foolishly for it. There was no talking sense to them, so I popped him in the forehead with the muzzle, and smacked Dennis lightly on the rebound.

  Then I retreated to the far side of the living room where I sat on Laura’s La-Z-Boy, pointed both shotguns—safety secretly on—their way, and waited for them to accept the situation.

  It took awhile. But time was on my side. Their heads hurt. Dennis was rubbing his right sideburn. Albert had a nickel-sized indentation in his forehead. Far worse, I was sure, were the hangovers closing in fast.

  “Aw come on, Ben.”

  “Don’t ‘come on, Ben’ me.”

  “We was only kidding.”

  “Like you were kidding when you killed Dicky?”

  “Huh?”

  “What?”

  “Killed Dicky? Dicky Butler? We didn’t kill Dicky Butler. You nuts, Ben?”

  “Where were you between noon and two that day?”

  “We was working.”

  “Bull.”

  “We was. We was. We told you, Ben.”

  “I know what you told me. But I also know you were lying.”

  “Ben, don’t turn us in.”

  “You admit you did it?”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed Dicky.”

  “No,” they chorused.

  “Then why did you lie about seeing Mr. Butler with the calf?”

  “We didn’t lie.”

  “There was no calf. He made it up.”

  “He did?”

  “And you guys went along because you needed an alibi. Dennis, your face is all scabbed. Looks like somebody really did a number on you a couple of weeks ago. Dicky kick your ass, again?”

  “No one kicked my ass,” he said sullenly.

  “What happened? Who hit you?”

  “No one.”

  “Then what happened to your face?”

  Albert started snickering.

  “Shut up,” Dennis growled.

  I pointed the shotgun at Albert. “What?”

  “He was doing airbags.”

  “What do you mean, ‘doing airbags’? You mean stealing airbags? From cars?”

  “Jervises’ll pay a hundred bucks for ’em. But they’re kind of tricky.”

  “The airbag blew up in your face?”

  “Yeah, kind of—I was getting pretty good at it.”

  Albert snickered, again. “He got a Allen wrench stuck in his head. I had to pull it out with pliers.”

  “Come closer, Dennis—Not too close!…” I peered over the shotgun barrel. Damn. “Okay, back where you were.” The Allen wrench had left a distinctive right-angle blue scar.

  “If you weren’t killing Dicky, where were you? What’s in the box?”

  They traded another long look and some resigned nods. Albert spoke. “Don’t tell nobody, okay?”

  “That depends on what’s in the box.”

  Dennis wrung his hands. “We didn’t kill Dicky.”

  “Show me!”

  Albert lurched to his knees and opened the dynamite box. I was praying it didn’t hold bloody ax handles; my cousins were just dumb enough to hide them instead of burning them.

  I was not expecting Veuve Clicquot champagne.

  “Don’t tell Mr. King, he’ll fire us,” groaned Albert.

  Dennis explained, “That’s why we lied about seeing Mr. Butler and the calf. We were afraid they’d find out we took the bottles home. So when you asked about Mr. Butler, we figured we were covered.”

  “What did you steal it for? You jerks. You got good jobs. You got a neat truck. He’s paying you regular. Wha’d you steal his champagne for?”

  “He wouldn’t let us run the gate during the party,” Albert explained sullenly.

  “And the stuff was just sitting there in the back of a van,” Dennis furthered the explanation with righteous logic. “Sat there for an hour. We figured, they got so much they ain’t going to miss it.”

  “How much you got left?”

  “All of it. We ain’t touched it.”

  “Well, why don’t you take it back? Say you found it in the woods. Like maybe somebody stashed it to steal later, then couldn’t come back with all the new security after the explosion.”

  “We went to the Liquor Locker. Steve says the stuff costs like sixty bucks a bottle?”

  “That’s what Steve would charge.”

  “We was
wondering like maybe we could—”

  “Take it back.”

  “Okay, Ben. If you say so.”

  They were very contrite. But when they actually apologized, I got suspicious. “Wait a moment, guys.”

  “Hey, we’re late for work, Ben.”

  “This’ll just take a minute.”

  “What’ll just take a minute? We gotta go. What are you doing? Careful!”

  I opened the box again and lifted out a bottle of champagne. And another. And a third. And there in the bottom was an unpleasant-looking stash of dynamite sticks.

  “Well, what do we have here?”

  “Dynamite.”

  “Hidden dynamite,” I corrected. “Have you been turning this?”

  “Yeah.”

  Thank God for small favors.

  “Let’s walk it way outside and then you’ll tell me where it came from.”

  I carried it myself after offloading the Veuve Clicquot. They shambled after me like arthritic hounds tracking their dinner plates. I made several trips onto the wet grass and noticed something peculiar. There was a variety of dynamite types. Some was ditching dynamite, 50% strength. Some was marked Special Gelatine 60%. Other sticks were labeled Extra, at 40%. I didn’t know much about dynamite, but clearly the sticks, which varied from five to eight inches in length, had not all been purchased in the same batch.

  “Okay, guys. Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know. We had it around,” said Albert, and Dennis volunteered, “I think Grandpa left it.”

  “Your grandfather’s been dead twenty years. I’m going to call Trooper Moody if you don’t tell me where it came from. Did you rob another highway job?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “Found it up at King’s.”

  “King’s?” How had such a motley collection of dynamite ended up at Fox Trot?

  Dennis claimed they’d found it in a construction shed. “Figured, what the hell, you can always use some dynamite. Right?”

  Henry King’s imported house builders had not been the country-casual sort to leave explosives behind.

  “I’m calling Trooper Moody.”

  “No!”

  “Why?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Tell him,” said Albert.

  “Shut up.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Okay, okay,” and opened up with what sounded like an even bigger whopper. “Mr. King sent us up to Butler’s to steal his dynamite and we—”

  “What?”

  “Mr. King said Old Man Butler was going to blow up Fox Trot if we didn’t take his dynamite away so we snuck up there and stole it. Like he told us to.”

  “Oh really? Wha’d you do with it?”

  “Stashed it where Mr. King showed us in the shed we told you about.”

  “And kept some for yourselves?”

  “No! Not his main stash. Just these little extras.”

  “They was loose in a little box,” Albert chimed in, “and we was all out. Nobody’ll miss ’em.”

  “Boys, if I could just recapitulate…you robbed Mr. Butler’s dynamite for Mr. King. Except for this dynamite which you kept from Mr. King? Okay? Couple of questions. How’d you happen to get past DaNang?”

  “The dog wasn’t there.”

  “And Mr. Butler?”

  “He was gone too.”

  “Convenient, seeing as how he rarely left his property.”

  “Mr. King told us the coast was clear, they was in Newbury.”

  At the General Store, telephoning his detonator. “How about Dicky?”

  “Didn’t see him.”

  Sleeping it off in the woodlot. What the hell—

  “Could I ask you guys a question? Did you ever wonder about a connection between the dynamite you stole from Mr. Butler and the bombing of Mr. King’s dam?”

  “Sure, Ben,” said Dennis. “We’re not stupid. What happened was, me and Albert was too late. Butler set his charge before we stole his dynamite. Weren’t our fault,” he added, little pig eyes brimful of honesty, and I knew he believed that Henry King had taken precautions, too late.

  I drove back to Newbury, very confused.

  If my cousins had just joined Trooper Moody and J.J. Topkis in the pantheon of the somewhat innocent, I still couldn’t believe that a twenty-million-dollar-a-year diplomat to the stars would kill a man to steal his farm.

  Josh Wiggens, maybe, thinking he was doing Henry a favor?

  Or could Josh have set King up for a fall, hoping to catch Julia on the rebound?

  Bert Wills sticking it to Henry, to avenge old insults and land Mrs. King and all she’d reap in divorce?

  Great motivation, except Bert didn’t seem brave enough.

  Chapter 28

  When I am very confused, or feeling very low, I throw myself into a physical project, like turning over the ground for a new garden—which in New England is about as physical as you can get short of organizing a granite quarry—or building something outdoors, which requires more muscle than cabinet-making skills. I was completely bewildered about who killed Dicky Butler, and further confused because I was not comfortable with the handsome check I received from the Butler defense fund for my services, considering how lame they had been, and the source of the money. I was also deeply pessimistic about any future with Julia, who had made it damn clear where her heart lay.

  So, confused and low, I made a deal with Scooter MacKay to let me build a corral off the backside of his barn. School had started. For several days, after Alison left in the morning, I spent the day alone, digging holes in the ground, pounding posts, driving sixteen-penny nails, and thinking hard. When I was done I invited Vicky over, ostensibly to show her what I had built, but really for a cup of coffee with a friendly ear I didn’t deserve. She listened to me ramble while we waited for Alison to come home. I admitted that I was still nowhere closer to helping Mr. Butler, and couldn’t imagine Henry King killing somebody with his own hands, even though I suspected that Josh Wiggens or Bert Wills might have done it for or against him.

  Vicky said, “What do you really mean to say to me?”

  I tried to distill what Marian had accused me of—of losing perspective by sleeping with witnesses—down to something clear. “I feel I’ve screwed up. That poor man would be home now if I had kept a clearer head.”

  “Penance? Is that why you—” she pointed out the window in the direction of Scooter’s barn.

  “It’s a start.”

  “Or another dodge.”

  “I’m trying to change.”

  “To what?”

  When I finally finished mumbling and er-ing and ah-ing, she said, coolly, “My own experience with broken hearts tells me that ‘transformation’ that sticks won’t happen until after you heal your heart. When you can live with yourself again, by yourself, then you can start transforming.”

  “All I’m trying to say is I’m trying.”

  “I wish you luck.” She reached across the table as if to lay her hand on mine, but quickly changed her mind, and ran it through her curls instead.

  DaNang started thumping his tail.

  “Here comes Alison.”

  “Ben, listen,” Vicky said, quickly, “you’re not a terrible person, you’re just…”

  I waited, wondering what?

  “…not someone you can count on.”

  Alison clumped up the back steps before I could admit that that sounded like a prerequisite for terrible.

  “Hey, you. How was school?”

  “Okay.” She looked surprised to see Vicky, and asked what I usually asked when I saw Vicky outside of Town Hall. “Who’s running Newbury?”

  “I just stopped by for coffee.”

  I asked, “Would you like to meet a new friend?”

  Alison looked wary. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone to play with. Want to see?” />
  “Where?” she breathed, trying to look past me into the kitchen, hope kindling in her eyes.

  “He’s next door,” I said. “Over at Scooter’s.”

  She looked dubiously at the formidable hedge that separated our yards. “Naomi didn’t have a litter.”

  “Let’s have a look.” I led her and Vicky through the hedge where it grows thin in the shade of our side-by-side barns, mine red, Scooter’s bigger and white. Her eyes got big at the sight of a new split rail fence.

  Vicky passed her a carrot. She stared at it, afraid to look up and be disappointed. When she did, she gave as satisfying a gasp as I’d ever heard from another human being.

  “His name is Redman,” I told her. “He’s a little big for you, but you’ll grow into him.”

  “Oh, wow!”

  “Need help getting aboard?”

  “I can do it.” She passed the carrot over the fence. Redman demolished it with teeth like piano keys, and nuzzled her palm for more. She stroked his nose and let him smell her. When she climbed the corral fence, the stallion stood like the patient middle-aged thoroughbred he was, although he skittered a little as she scrambled into the saddle, causing Vicky to tense up beside me.

  With the quick physical ease with which she was blessed, Alison leaned over and adjusted her stirrups.

  “Connie! Look at my horse!”

  Connie was negotiating cautiously across the lawn on Scooter’s arm. She waved her silver-headed walking stick. “What a handsome horse!”

  To me, in hushed but stern tones, she said, “Benjamin, have you any idea how much these animals eat?”

  “Worth it.”

  Scooter remarked that when you added up the stall I’d built secretly in his barn while Alison was at school, and the corral, and the hay I’d humped up into the loft, no one in Newbury had ever gone to so much trouble not to get a cat.

  “Worth it.”

  Redman’s ears got suddenly sharp and swiveled toward Main Street. Around Scooter’s house came Ira Roth, from whose tax-shelter horse farm I’d acquired Redman in exchange for my share of the Butler Defense fund plus a promise of too many hours of free future investigation. He was carrying a liquor box under one arm and wearing a Stetson hat, which he removed with a flourish for Connie.