“I see what you mean,” I said, not sure why I was getting this lesson. Did Sam think I had influence over an arson investigator?
“And look at that,” Sam said, not finished. He pointed to a forklift near the delivery door of the factory. “That tank holds eight gallons of propane. Some idiot who was helping us one Saturday decided to put a space heater right near the lift because there was a cold wind coming in the door. Do you know what could have happened if one of us hadn’t come along and whisked it away?
“I can imagine,” I said, still wondering what my reaction was supposed to be.
“Do you know how many things could go wrong, every hour of every day in a shop like this?”
I didn’t, and I was interested only in what went wrong on the night of the fire. I realized it was naïve of me to think that Sam would let anything incriminating slip from his tongue, especially since a lawsuit might still be pending, not to mention criminal charges.
“Sam!” Lillian’s screechy voice rang through the plant. She used a high-pitched, scolding tone, apparently not as sure as I was that Sam would be prudent. “Sam,” she yelled again.
Sam addressed me in a hurried tone. I wondered if he were always fighting against Lillian’s authority. “See that electrical conduit up there?” he asked, pointing to a corner above a complicated machine. “Lots of times people cheat on the material, but not here. My boys follow the rules.”
“Sam,” Lillian said, catching up with us. “Emory needs you in the shop.”
The last time I saw him, Emory had been seated at the conference table next to his twin. And since the entire shop was visible from almost every corner, I could see that he hadn’t entered the area.
“Coming, Mother,” Sam said, poking me in the arm as he left me. Lillian barely acknowledged my presence as she stalked off.
I certainly hadn’t been a model parent and no right to criticize, but it seemed clear to me why neither of the Ferguson twins had ever married.
I made a dash for the door. Not that I was afraid of an old lady. Or a witch.
I shifted my tote in preparation for entering my car and fleeing E&E Parts. I dug out my keys and clicked the remote from a few feet away.
What had I learned from my visit to the outskirts of town? Only that Lillian was in charge. She’d been seated at the head of the conference table, the twins on one side, Lynch and Crowley on the other. Sam had been playful when she called out to him, but it was clear he meant to obey.
Crunch. Crunch.
Footsteps and a rustling of clothing on my left startled me.
“Let me get that for you.” Lynch’s deep voice. He came around me and put his hand on my car door.
My heart flipped. I couldn’t imagine why. We were standing in broad daylight, and Lynch’s voice had been pleasant, his hands free of weaponry. If I were one to participate in Halloween costume parties, this year it would be the cowardly lion for me, no doubt about it.
“Mr. Lynch,” I said, embarrassed that he most likely knew he’d frightened me.
Over Lynch’s shoulder, about twenty yards away, I saw Crowley and the twins hurrying toward three different vehicles. Emory, who supposedly needed Sam in the shop, must have changed his mind.
Crowley kept his head down. I peered at him to be sure he didn’t have his hand in a bulging pocket. The twins took long strides toward their cars, one white and one blue pickup. Eliot, apparently unable to be completely rude to a former teacher, waved at me but turned his head away quickly.
I had the feeling they were all using Lynch to distract me so they wouldn’t have to talk to me. Or had they sent Lynch to do their dirty work? I inched my body closer to my car, trying to put the open door between him and me.
“Geraldine. May I call you Geraldine?” Lynch asked. He was taller than me by a couple of inches, maybe six feet tall, and he used every inch to appear to tower over me.
“Of course, Patrick.” I was glad to hear, after the fact, that the intimidation I’d felt hadn’t revealed itself in my voice.
It flashed through my mind that, all things considered, Patrick Lynch had done nothing bad to me; I’d tripped all on my own. He’d entered Oliver’s house with a key, possibly given to him by Oliver. Who knew what complex relationships existed between a city inspector and his clientele? Lynch had simply been protecting himself against a possible intruder—me. That Lynch or Crowley had a gun in the first place was not surprising. Construction sites could be dangerous places. There were rats, for example. The nonhuman kind.
When I saw him at the apartment, Lynch had said that he was there to claim property that belonged to him. Maybe that was true but I doubted it. I figured he was more than likely there to claim property that might work against him, like a computer file. For now it helped me to consider all the benign possibilities that I could think of.
“We seem to meet in the most unusual places,” he said, with a smile that relaxed me somewhat. “What brought you to E&E Parts on this beautiful day?”
I took a moment to gather my wits and think of my training from Skip (not that he intended to train me with his tidbits and anecdotes): when you’re interviewing a witness or a suspect, you don’t answer their questions; you try to get your own answered.
Now that we were on a first name basis, this might be the time to ask Patrick about the memo I’d found, from him to Ken, noting the “arrangement which benefits many,” and a company or project called EELFS.
“I wasn’t aware until recently that you had business dealings with my late husband.”
Well, that wasn’t a question, but I was a rookie.
Lynch’s smile turned crooked, his long scar curving to the left side of his cheek. “Architects are an important part of my operation,” he said. “We depend on their cooperation.”
That was not what I wanted to hear. I felt a chill along my spine, though the sun couldn’t have been warmer on my back. I didn’t like having Ken considered part of the Lynch operation. I wished Skip were here. I’d ask him how to get information you didn’t really want to know.
“I understand you worked together”—here I paused to clear my throat—“on the remodel of this factory.”
Lynch’s nod was slow and deliberate with a touch of a threat.
Why didn’t I just ask him outright? Did Ken cheat for you? Did he take money to skirt regulations? Is that the arrangement you talked about in the memo? Is that why the fire broke out and Mr. Patterson died? Was that the EELFS project?
“We certainly did,” he said.
I had a dizzy moment until I realized he wasn’t answering yes to the questions in my mind, but simply acknowledging that Ken worked on the remodel.
“I’m sure it was a satisfying experience,” I said. “My husband was a very respected and honorable businessman.” Even to myself, I sounded like a doting wife—or indulgent mother, like Lillian.
“Now, see, that might be coming into question,” he said. “That honorable part.”
My throat tightened and my voice came out in a high-pitched whine, not as loud as Lillian’s, but just as witchy. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning maybe we can help each other.” He laughed. “Hey, you can be an elf.”
“What exactly was the EELFS project, Patrick? Was it this remodel?”
He flinched, perhaps sorry he’d mentioned it. “I tell you what, Geraldine. You leave the past alone and so will I.”
I hated the way he pronounced my name, emphasizing each syllable equally. “There’s nothing in the past that I need to worry about,” I said, my jaw so tight it ached.
Lynch touched his forehead, tipping an imaginary hat and turning to leave. “Wives don’t always know everything, Geraldine.”
“This one does,” I said and got in my car.
Could he possibly know how unsure I was of those words?
I sat in my car, unable to move a muscle. I watched Lynch walk toward a white BMW. He had the air of one who had sealed a deal. What made him think he needed me to
hide something in the past? And the reference to an elf, which, I felt sure, was related to the EELFS in the “arrangements” memo. I liked a good puzzle but not when the stakes of solving it were so high.
I pictured Lynch in a bright red costume for Halloween, horns and pitchfork jutting up and out.
I hated the thought that I might have just made a deal with him.
When I was finally able to take control of my body, I wound around Aviation Way, glad to be among very few vehicles on the road. The better to track someone following me, I reasoned. I imagined that I was leaving inhospitable foreign soil, where I hadn’t understood the language and needed to leave word with my travel agent that I never wanted to return.
He did the mash. He did the monster mash.
Boris Pickett again. I flipped open my cell phone and saw Maddie’s number on the screen. A welcome message from my homeland. I put the phone on my lap and pushed “speaker,” obeying the letter, if not the spirit, of the “hands free” California cell phone law.
“Hi, Grandma. It’s almost lunchtime.”
“It’s just a little past eleven,” I said, a smile breaking out at the sound of the friendliest voice in the world.
“I didn’t have much breakfast.”
It felt good to laugh. “I’m hungry, too,” I said, hoping I’d be able to keep something down by the time we got together.
“Here’s Mr. Baker,” Maddie said.
“Hi,” Henry said. “Are you at a good point for a break?”
“More than you know.”
“Fine, then. What shall we do for lunch?” he asked, as if we were a family.
“I’ll meet you at Willie’s,” I said, ready for family.
I parked in front of Abe’s Hardware, next door to Willie’s, and took out my notepad. I’d written down the Sunnyvale number for the architectural firm that had taken over the business from Ken and Artie. It was time to tackle another item on my to-do list.
I punched in the digits and reached a voice mail telling me that all lines were busy but I was welcome to leave a message. I wished I’d written out a script for such an eventuality. I stumbled through a sentence about trying to reach Arthur Dodd, former owner of the business with Ken Porter. I left my name and where to reach me, then flipped the phone closed.
There wasn’t much more I could do except join my family for lunch.
Even more family than I expected had gathered at Bagels by Willie. I spotted Henry, Taylor, Maddie, and Skip in the back of the shop at Willie’s largest table.
“Look, Grandma, we found Uncle Skip,” Maddie said, as if Skip weren’t a tall, stands-out-in-a-crowded-room redhead.
Henry half stood in greeting and smiled at me in a way that erased whatever had ruined my morning. He pulled out a chair and I sat next to him. Skip gave me a wink and a knowing look that reminded me of my days with adolescents in the ALHS cafeteria, and I gave him one back that said, “Don’t you dare make a comment.”
“Uncle Skip says knock-knock jokes are from Shakespeare,” Taylor said, sounding very comfortable as another of Skip’s admiring preteen “nieces,” and as a member of the family.
I was thrilled about the latest scholarly outreach on the part of my nephew, now studying Shakespeare to round out his law enforcement training. I’d meant to give him some related literary criticism to augment his class material. I had file drawers full of articles that might now be of interest to him. It was probably just as well that I didn’t push it on him.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture the relevant page in my well-worn text for Macbeth.
“ ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? . . . Knock, knock. Who’s there, in the other devil’s name?’ ” I recited.
Henry started a round of (thankfully) subdued applause.
“Wicked,” Maddie said.
There was a time when I could have gone much farther in the scene. Then I might have deserved the kudos; now I blushed and held up my hand to stop them.
As far as I knew, there were only weak links connecting the porter’s (not this Porter) passage in Macbeth to the current use of the phrase in endless jokes told by children of all ages. My students liked to think they were reading the jokes’ origin, however, and whatever made Shakespeare seem like a regular guy, even a guy who invented jokes, was fine with me.
We placed our orders with a young waitress who was overly solicitous to Skip and continued our happy talk.
Maddie’s report: Richard and Mary Lou had taken her last week to see a three-dimensional animated film, an experience that called for special glasses. I knew Mary Lou could relax enough to enjoy a kids’ movie, but I wasn’t so sure about Richard. Maddie’s claim that “my dad even sat through it” made me proud of my son for sticking out what must have seemed like hours of sheer boredom.
Taylor’s report: she’d seen the same movie with Kay and Bill and admitted how scared she’d been, ducking “even though I knew all those creatures weren’t really coming at me.”
“And sometimes they came from behind you,” Maddie added, waving her arms to indicate many directions of attack.
Henry’s report evoked more fear in me than flying creatures in living three dimensions: he’d read about a dollhouse castle, in one-inch-to-one-foot scale, formerly owned and built by a silent film star. The eight-by-eight-foot house was the dream project of the actress and her family. Its chandeliers contained real diamonds, emeralds, and pearls; its china was a set of Royal Doulton. In the chapel lay the smallest Bible in the world, printed with real type.
Those weren’t the scary parts. What frightened me was Henry’s closing suggestion.
“The castle is at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry,” he said. “I think we should all make a trip there to see it.”
I cleared my throat and looked quickly at Skip. “And what have you been up to?” I asked, before he could comment on the trip proposal.
The idea didn’t get by Maddie and Taylor, however.
They squealed in unison.
“Yes!”
The girls proceeded to complain to each other about how they’d never been to Chicago in their whole lives. They failed to mention how each had been treated to a cross-country tour before they started school, summer vacations up and down the West Coast, and countless weekend visits to theme parks.
I didn’t repeat my own sad story, about seeing nothing west of the Bronx until I was almost thirty years old.
Maddie and Taylor didn’t seem to notice that the adults at the table, including Henry, whom I couldn’t bring myself to look at, had already dropped the subject. I knew I’d have to address it later with Henry, but not in public.
A strange feeling came over me as I felt my fear slip away and an image of my suitcase came to my mind. I would have been hard pressed to say for sure how I saw that talk with Henry going.
Skip declined to talk about his work. He treated us instead to a hint of what his Halloween costume would be. “It’s from Shakespeare,” he said.
“So’s mine,” said Maddie, delighted, while I made a mental note to get started on finding decent material for eye of newt, toe of frog, and so on.
The arrival of five bagel platters and drinks all around stifled chatter for a few minutes.
I took a bite of a cinnamon bagel with honeyed cream cheese. I was amazed to find that I’d regained my appetite.
Chapter 15
On the way home, Maddie and I decided to take a detour down another Lincoln Point street that was known for outstanding Halloween decorations. Appomattox Way didn’t take competition as seriously as Sangamon River Road (which had been perhaps a little too serious this year), but its lawn and window decorations were quite extravagant.
One family had given over its entire front picture window to a life-size silhouette of an old woman sitting in a rocking chair, the scene unabashedly reminiscent of one in the movie Psycho that featured Norman Bates’s mother. My one required course in college science was a dim memory, and now
I wished I’d paid more attention. I wondered what kind of elaborate lighting system could produce a black silhouette on such a bright day.
We parked across from the immobile old woman and walked a couple of blocks, past a lawn that presented a man popping up and down from his casket bed, like a macabre jack-in-the-box, a trick that didn’t seem as humorous as it might have without a real-life murder in Lincoln Point. Next door was a display of ghoulish black creatures—a vampire bat with a large wing spread, and three kinds of vulture.
“Wicked,” Maddie said.
We were about to turn back to the car when we spotted our crafter friend, Karen Striker, disembarking from an SUV across the street. I’d forgotten that she lived on Appomattox. With her delivery date just around the corner, Karen had much needed help from her husband, who guided her to the sidewalk.
What a trick or treat, I thought, if Karen went into labor in the vicinity of the lawn decoration Maddie and I had just passed—a large black cradle marked Rosemary’s Baby.
Karen spotted Maddie and me and waved us over.
Maddie was happy to cross the street where she could get a closer look at a family of pumpkins that served as candy bowls. It had already been a half hour since her last meal, so I could understand her need for food.
“We just got back from that big miniatures show in Mill Valley,” Karen said, indicating several large tote bags being dragged from the backseat by her husband, Mark.
“You’ve been all the way to Marin County and back already?” I asked, discreetly pointing to her state of advanced pregnancy.
“I had to go,” she said. “The next show isn’t until after the baby is born. At the last minute, I decided on a Cape Cod for Baby Striker. I realized the Victorian I’ve been working on is never going to be finished before she arrives. I’m hardly finished sewing the dust ruffles for her bedroom. I had to get something I could decorate simply and quickly. So I bought a much simpler style and I already have enough furniture to set it up in just a few days.”
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