by Archer Mayor
Laura was obviously impressed. “Wow.” “See? You might even like their filet of materialist flambe.” “Not funny. There sure are a lot of them here.” That was true. A dozen or so men, women and children in quilted pseudo-army garb were sprinkled behind the bar counter, around the kitchen door, and about the fire. Apparently, the Kingdom Restaurant doubled as a hangout for its owners.
One of the women approached us, smiling pleasantly, and led us to a booth off to the side. Walking in her wake, I noticed an odd but not wholly unpleasant scent wafting behind her, some complex mixture of things herbal and animal, including a subtle dollop of old-fashioned body odor. Laura followed me so closely, she stepped on my heels. The waitress indicated a small slate on the table, with elegant chalk writing on it, propped against the wall. “That is your menu. Our meals are made from our own products, grown or raised on our own land, and prepared daily. I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled; would you like anything non-alcoholic from the bar in the meantime? We have a wide variety of fruit juices, natural sodas, and sparkling and nonsparkling waters.” I looked at Laura, who was slowly peeling off her down windbreaker like a reluctant warrior shedding his armor in the face of the enemy. “Want anything?” She looked from the waitress to me.
“Coke?” %153 “I’m sorry, we don’t carry Coke, but we do have something like “Okay,” she said doubtfully, and slid into the booth. “I’ll have one, too,” I said as I took off my coat and hung it on e hook by the booth. The waitress went off to fulfill our order. “So far so good.
They haven’t asked us to step into a huge stew yet.” She gave me an exasperated look. “All right, I’m a little nervous.” I reached out and patted her hand. “I’m glad you suggested this.
occurred to me I was criticizing the people at Gorman’s meeting for getting to know the Order, when I was guilty of the same thing.” She looked around. “It is a nice looking place.” She was wearing ery pretty, close-fitting, V-necked blouse. Her throat was bare and r smooth, pale skin ran uninterrupted to the edges of her collar, to ere the first button rested like a medal on her chest. It was startling realize that this was the first relaxed, social moment I’d had since rrived in Gannet.
The waitress returned with a couple of glasses and two cans of bert Corr’s Cola. I quickly glanced at the menu and ordered the least re thing I could find, chili, with a side order of ketchup. Laura settled lemon chicken.
After the waitress left again, Laura looked at her drink suspiusly.
“It’s a national brand. I’ve seen it around.” She sipped gingerly.
“So?” “Not bad.” I decided to ply her for a little more information about the Order. hat was it like when they first came to town?” I indicated the people ound us with my eyes.
“Kind of exciting, in a way. Sarris made a point of being friendly.
ey paid top dollar for the buildings and the farm. People were saying might be a good thing, give the town a shot in the arm, but that was wishful thinking. I remember Greta saying she’d benefit from the siness this restaurant pulled in. Overflow, she called it. Can you agine that? She must’ve been dreaming. No one in their right mind uld come to this town to eat at the Rocky River, especially the tlanders.” I already knew that the backbone of the Kingdom Restaurant was mailorder business. With that as an extra source of income, Greta’s ancial outlook looked doubly doomed. “Did anyone try to roll out e welcome mat for the Order?” She shook her head. “People talk about it now, but no one really %154 went out of their way. I don’t think it would have worked anyway.
Sarris brought his group up here to get away from the locals. The Northeast Kingdom isn’t exactly famous for its hospitality, and I think that suited him.” “Where do they grow their food?” “North of town.
There’s a dirt road called McCallister’s Road. It leads to an old farm-” “Which used to be called McCallister’s Farm. I remember.” She laughed.
“Right. It was abandoned when they bought it, but they’ve done a lot with it. It’s in full production now, or so everyone says.” “Who’s ‘everyone’?” “Oh, other farmers around. Early on, the Order asked surrounding farmers how to work the land. They wanted to know how Vermont farming differed from down south. They paid well, so people were happy to help.
But there’s been less contact lately, now that they know what they’re doing. In fact, they have several advantages over the local farmers.”
“How so?” “Well, they don’t use any middlemen, the mortgage is paid on the farm, they don’t use any power machinery, and the farm hands work for free and there’re a lot of them, too.” “Any resentment from the locals?” “Some, I guess. It’s not really the same market-these people avoid the mainstream-but still, some of them feel the cult’s setting a bad example. Same as with the townspeople; at first, they were well paid, then the money handouts stopped.” She took a swallow of her drink.
During the pause in conversation, I thought I could hear sounds from the seashore, mixed with rain. I looked around, trying to locate the source, and found it leaking from a loudspeaker high in one corner-“natural” Muzak.
“How do you know so much about this?” “My father and father-in-law are farmers,” she said shortly. I watched her swirling the ice cubes around ill her glass, her eyes on the tiny whirlpool. Her tone had revealed as much as her brevity on the subject.
Their life was not to be hers. Apparently, however, that’s where her determination had run out; she knew what she didn’t want but had no alternatives. Our waitress returned bearing our meals, her smile still in place. I focused on her more carefully as she placed the dishes before us. “That was fast.” “Well, we’re not too busy, and a lot of the ingredients are prepared ahead of time.” %155 “You work in the restaurant full-time, or do you do other ings?” She looked at me closely then, her smile fading just around the ges.
“We all work at everything: It’s a sharing community where all e equal.”
“So you all get to know each other pretty well, I guess.” She looked at me as if I’d suddenly lapsed into Arabic. “You ever meet Julie Wingate?” She looked over her shoulder nervously. A man at the bar, watchus, came over to our table. The waitress faded away as he drew up.
an I help you?” The tone of voice was neutral, but I found the uence unsettling.
“No, not really.” “I got the impression you were asking your waitress questions she uldn’t answer.” “I don’t know if she could or not; she didn’t.” “That could be because she knows who you are, Mr. Gunther.”
“Ah, very flattering.” “I’m glad you think so. Well, if there’s nothing I can do, I’ll let u enjoy your meal.” “You know, we’re trying to protect you as much as anyone else; don’t want to see any more of you hurt or killed.” He smiled. “What you want is irrelevant to us.” He turned his ck and returned to the bar. There was a prolonged silence after he left. “Maybe this was a bad a,” Laura finally said.
I poured ketchup into the chili, crumbled some crackers over the p, and stirred it all together. It tasted pretty bland-Tabasco might ve helped. “Hell with ‘em-food’s good.” She looked doubtful, but cut off a piece of chicken and ate. “Good?” She stared at my bowl. I was adding salt and pepper. “Mine’s fine.
hat are you doing?” “Spicing it up a bit.” She had the kindness to keep quiet. I didn’t really mind; my eating bits were legendary in some circles and I’d already survived a lifetime harassment. More important, it had taken Laura’s mind off her dden discomfort at being here.
“So,” I said after a few spoonfuls, “have you decided what to do out you and Tommy?” She chewed a while longer before answering. Then she put down r fork. “I don’t think I have your courage.” “Courage?” I was disturbed by her choice of words. Her view of %156 me, I’d come to realize, needed a good dose of reality, something a l,e’l”5c’n llkp Gail we1in be 9n e’soI’ert at alm1’riisteri”I~~ “You can live alone; you can come up here and do this job, with people you don’t know; you can handle
yourself in tough situations and not have it faze you. I don’t think I could be that way.” “That probably makes me callous, not courageous.”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. It was a perfectly natural gesture, but the sentimentality of it made me uncomfortable: It spoke too well of her need to make me the solution to her problems. “I don’t think so. It’s not callous to be strong enough to not care what other people think.” I shook my head. “You’re making me sound too good to be true.” “You are good.” It was a painful signpost of her inexperience-or my skepticism. I turned my hand so that I held hers in mine. “What I am is a crusty old cop. Some of what you’re talking about comes from my just not giving a damn anymore. And the rest is flat out wrong. I care about what people think; I have concerns about coming across well and not looking like a fool. Everyone does. I want you to like me, for instance, but that’s just a normal thing for men and women to do-for anyone to do.” Her face softened. “I do like you. I think I liked you before we even met, just from what I heard from Buster. And now that we have met, I know I was right.” I was angry at myself. Subconsciously, I’d been playing her up, encouraging her. I’d been enjoying the attention, using it to soothe my frazzled ego.
“Laura, you don’t really know me. I live alone for good reasons.
I’m narrow-minded in a lot of ways and I’m selfish as hell-can’t share worth a damn. Don’t look to me for examples of how to run your life; look to yourself and find out what it is you want out of life. Like you said, you’ve got no kids, nothing really to tie you down. If leaving Tommy is what’s best, then do it, but if you think the two of you still have a chance, then maybe it’s worth fixing up.” “I don’t know if I’d be good at that,” she muttered, staring at her plate.
“Come on. You said you lacked courage. That’s baloney-you beat your alcoholism, didn’t you?” “For the moment.” “Did Tommy help at all?” “Not much. Tommy doesn’t do anything much.” Her face became hard.
“I’d try to make it work if he was interested. Hell, I’d make it %157
rk if anyone was interested.” With that, like quicksilver, she was king softly into my eyes.
I felt like a tugboat pushing an ocean liner away from the rocks.
Tommy’s not the man for you, Laura, then find someone who is. don’t tie yourself into knots for the first nice guy who comes along. at’Il bite you in the nose in the long run.” “Do you like me?” I was getting a little frustrated with this. “Of course I like you, but set in my ways.
You’re stuck on me because you’re unhappy with mmy.” I’d been harsher than I’d intended. Indeed, even as I spoke them, alf-regretted my own words. To a guy my age, the palpable yearning an attractive younger woman was a seductive proposition, as pleasto my vanity as it was foolish and misguided to my inner moral pass. In any case, I had pricked whatever bubble had been swelling ween us. She took her hand back and began finishing her meal. I took her cue and attacked my chili again, but the taste had gone of it somehow. After a couple of mouthfuls, I put down my spoon quit. As I looked up, I saw Edward Sarris staring at me from across room.
Moments later, he walked up to the table. “Enjoying your meal?” Laura froze in midbite. Sarris smiled. “Please, continue.” She did, though obviously with limited enthusiasm. I gestured to seat beside me. “Join us?” “No, thank you.” He leaned against the table opposite us instead, hands in his pants pockets, his ankles crossed the perfect picture leisure.
“So, business or pleasure?” “The meal was a pleasure, the fact that we had it here was, I admit, oncession to curiosity.” “Nicely put. So, what do you think?” He pulled out a hand and tured around the room.
“It’s pretty similar to the way The Common se Restaurant is set up in Island Pond, but, as they say, imitation he highest form of flattery.”
“I think it’s materialistic as hell. How do you justify it, given your ‘Iosophy?” “Of which you know next to nothing, I might add.” “Okay, but isn’t there some truth to that?” “Perhaps. What you fail to recognize is that we deal with principle ed with pragmatism. We intend to outlive you to the end of this ented world, and to do that we must live on the fringes of your rId, not utterly apart from it.” %158 “I hear you collect all valuables from entering members and that you have insurance on all your buildings. How’s that fit in?” “I doubt you are truly curious how that ‘fits,’ as you put it. Suffice it to say it’s perfectly legal and that you needn’t waste your time trying to prove I’m a despot leading a bunch of deranged half-wits to poverty.” “I have heard that.” “I don’t doubt it. You’ve probably also heard about sacrifices in the night.” “What about Julie Wingate? Have you seen her around?” “No, I’m afraid not.” His manner was consistently relaxed on the outside, ice-cold on the inside. I had to give him high marks for composure. So far, he had avoided all the easy cliches-no temper tantrums, no outright refusals, no bald-faced lies that I could immediately expose, although I knew in my bones his last comment was pure baloney.
“I hear you’re not cooperating in locating her.” His eyebrows shot up.
“Really?” “You claim you can’t force your followers to help us out, and they won’t move a muscle without your okay.” I glanced at the man behind the counter. “Or one of your lieutenants.” “The first half of that is true; not the second.” “That’s not what we just witnessed. We asked our waitress a simple question, and she immediately was replaced by that man over there.” He followed my pointed finger. “She didn’t know the answer to your question, I suppose.” “I asked her if she knew Julie. Surely she knew the answer to that.” He smiled. “It would seem so. I have no explanation.” It was a wonderful answer, a total roadblock disguised as beguiling truthfulness.
It occurred to me that until we had some concrete evidence that the Order was involved in all this, Sarris would be happy to play verbal footsie ‘til the cows came home. As he’d said earlier, he was quite good at it. I glanced at Laura. “You finished?” She nodded.
Sarris looked disappointed. “No dessert?” “Not this time.” I put a twenty on the table, more than enough to cover the bill and tip.
He reached for the money. “Let me get you your change.” “No, keep it.”
I rose and helped Laura into her coat. Sarris unhooked mine and handed it to me. “After this is all over, Lieutenant Gunther, I’d like it if you could come back informally.
%159 re antagonists now, to be sure, but I have enjoyed our conversas”’
“Seems like all I do is ask questions and all you say is, ‘No ment.’”
“Surely, you’ve glimpsed better than that.” “I haven’t glimpsed much of anything.” Laura preceded me through the door. We stopped on the walkway ide and adjusted our coats against the chill, which, compared to the th of the restaurant, had a pleasant bite to it. “You two guys sure have strange conversations. I can’t figure out u like each other or not.” “I don’t like him but he has a certain style.” She shivered slightly, getting used to the cold. “He gives me the ps. Thanks for dinner, though. It was nice.” “Let me walk you back to your car.”
“Okay.” I stuck out my arm in a Cary Grant gesture. She didn’t know to her arm through mine, and instead patted my elbow awkwardly rent movies.
Suddenly, I heard a soft crack beside me, along the dark wall of estaurant. I turned my head in time to see Rennie Wilson standing e shadow.
“Rennie. We’ve been looking all over for you.” He turned in an instant and vanished around the edge of the ing.
“Rennie. Hang on, goddamn it. We gotta talk.” I bolted after him but had to contend with a small picket fence that ked the alley. By the time I cleared it, his crashing footsteps were e far end of the building.
The narrow alleyway that ran alongside the restaurant was pitchand choked with high weeds and brush. I ran with my hands in of my face like a blind man, praying I wouldn’t lose an eye or be ked senseless by something hanging low from overhead. I was driven as much by desperation as by ad
renaline. Christ only what risks Rennie was running by not coming in, but one of them ure was a small army of policemen, armed and convinced he was lent killer.
I broke through the end of the alley into the overgrown rectangueld behind the Order residences. The grass was chest-high and wasn’t much more light here than in the alley. The sky was cast and there were no streetlights aside from the one blocked by ark hulk of the firehouse.
%160 I stopped dead in my tracks and listened. A dog balked far away a car door slammed. Somewhere I heard muted laughter. In the house’ to the north, lights shone through the windows. I watched them, hoping to catch some movement between them and me. My eyes scanned slowly, trying not to skip from light to light trying to see more than was humanly possible. About midway from Ief to right I saw a short shadow, too broad for a sapling, too narrow fo a shed, about a hundred feet away. I moved slightly to one side, sIidin~ a distant-lit window along so it would backlight the shape. It was man, standing stock-still. I crouched and began moving toward him, hoping to hell wouldn’t step on anything that would give me away. I got about thre’ yards before my left shin struck something thin, horizontal, and resist ant-a wire. As my momentum pushed me forward, I tried to lift mj foot over, got my shoe caught, and began to fall. I made a giant ster with my right leg, hit the same low-strung piece of wire, and fel headlong into someone’s abandoned fenced garden.
I scrambled up as quickly as I could, but I knew I’d lost my on’ chance.
The shadow was gone, leaving only the faint sound of a distanz body moving swiftly through the grass. Again, as when I’d seen Bruce Wingate lying dead at the bottotr of that ravine, I felt as if I’d let something slip through my hands something that was to cost me dearly.
I called Hamilton after losing Rennie, and he’d rallied the troops For most of the night, we drove, walked, and talked our way acros’ what seemed like the entire county, all for nought. It was Rennie” backyard, and he obviously knew it well enough to stay out of our way On the other hand, it gave me plenty of time to think. Despite the case against him, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Rennie was running for reasons other than Wingate’s murder. There were too many inconsistencies; too many leaps of logic, like the assump. tion that a punch in the face merited a lethal revenge. Also, there were the other actors in the play-Sarris, Ellie, Gor.