The Grave - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels)

by Charles L. Grant

  "Hey, Miller, I asked you if she can afford it."

  "She doesn't have to, Fel. Tell her I'll be glad to do a search the first chance I get."

  "How," she wondered, more to the office than to him, "does the man manage to make a decent living?"

  "I make it," he said quietly, firmly enough to bring a flush to her cheeks. "Anything else while I was out playing Natty Bumppo?"

  Felicity sniffed displeasure and tapped the sheaf of papers against her chin. "A lady called."

  "Oh?"

  The smile was almost wicked. "I think she said her name was Andrea Murdoch. I could be wrong," she said quickly, "but I don't usually make mistakes like that. It was . . . yes, it was Andrea Murdoch."

  He sat up quickly, damning her with a scowl. "Andy? Really? What did she want?"

  "She wanted very definitely—and not very nicely, if you ask me—she wanted to know why you didn't stop at the house when you left." The wickedness prevailed. "She sounded awfully mad, Miller. I think you blew that one, but good."

  "There is nothing to blow," he told her, dropped his feet to the floor, and turned away, staring at the blank wall next to him.

  The office grew silent save for the muffled scratchings of Felicity's pen over hastily grabbed paper. He knew he should apologize to her, though he didn't know why—or even if—he had offended her. She was young; perhaps too young even for her ripe old twenty-four. Everything to her was the makings of a soap opera; a grand one, and convoluted, and perhaps self-mocking . . . but it was a soap opera nonetheless. She was, in fact, very much like his wife. Ex-wife. Both of them had been little more than children when they had married during the early part of his second year in the service; and when they had grown in California, in Tokyo, in Ankara, they had somehow grown apart. The divorce had been a simple one— though not all that painless—and they continued to keep in intermittent touch, through calling or writing, ironically more friendly now than when they'd been married.

  "Miller?" Soft. Apologetic without knowing why.

  He grunted, not turning. The grain in the walnut paneling was soothing, a balm; he used it sometimes to force his mind to drift when he was sorting clues from the dross. Or when he wanted to cut off the world from the embarrassment of his self-pity.

  "Miller?"

  She never gives up, he thought, not unkindly. Soap opera or not, she's saved me too often. "Yeah?"

  A hesitation. A wondering. He could almost feel her make up her mind about the state of his mood.

  "Just after you left, Dr. Stanworth called. He wants to know if you'll have lunch with him tomorrow. I guess he wants you to invest in something."

  He couldn't remain aloof, knew she'd done it deliberately to bait him, and draw him. "Now how in hell do you know that?"

  "Doctors are rich, right? These days the only way you get rich is by investing in something. Like gold. So, you'll have lunch with him?"

  "Sure."

  "That's what I told him."

  A rush of heated, irrational anger was doused instantly by his laugh and a bemused shake of his head. "Fel," he said, "what makes you think . . . whatever gave you the idea that I need a mother here, as well as in Colorado."

  "You didn't wipe your feet when you came in."

  "I own the place, remember?"

  She scoffed, and tossed a folder across the narrow aisle, placing it squarely between his hands. ''This is Mrs. Thames' latest gem. Something about a genuine Mohawk tribal bowl. I don't know. She came in just after Dr. Stanworth, while you were out stalking the Great Oxrun Handplow with gun and camera."

  He didn't open it. In one corner, near the green tab with the client's name, was a doodled sketch of a robin on its back.

  Chapter 5

  "Josh?" The bird in shadow, waiting on the car for him to return; the bird in shadow, lying beneath the car with a broken neck.

  A mass, in shadow, without an arm.

  "Hey . . . Josh?"

  There was no doubt about it, he was cracking up. It had to be the answer. Why would something like this bother him so? Unless it was the accident, the blood by the wreck, the wind that had nearly knocked him off his feet. Too hard; he was working too hard, trying too hard; thinking he could run free in the world, chasing other people's rainbows.

  He groaned; he knew he needed a vacation when he started getting maudlin.

  "For god's sake, say something!"

  He tapped at the sketch; he had to know. "This thing," he said, fighting to contain the sudden disgust he felt. "When did you do this?"

  "Just before," she said, puzzled. "While you were telling me about what happened out there." Her eyes widened. "Oh, Jesus, Miller, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry."

  "It's all right."

  "Hell, it was an unconscious thing, that's all. Really it was." She slammed a palm on her desk. "You're an idiot, Lancaster. You deserve to be boiled."

  He said nothing. He pushed the folder to one side and stared instead at the curved back of the partition. A moment later, the muscles in his thighs and the small of his back began demanding a long hot bath and a long uncomplicated book. One with pictures, perhaps, so he wouldn't have to think.

  Pop, have you ever had one of those days!

  Son, when you get to be my age, every day is one of those days.

  What do you do about it?

  I go to bed and pray tomorrow will be different.

  Does it work!

  Sure. Unless it turns out to be one of those days.

  He grinned broadly, suddenly, for the first time in months the absence of his parents making him ache. It was, however, a pleasant feeling, filled with the snippets and runs of nostalgia that glossed his childhood and made the world sane.

  Until he thought again of the man with one arm.

  He was chilled, then, and sand began to gather behind his eyes. "Why don't you take off, Fel," he said quietly. "There's nothing else that has to be done today, I guess. Nothing that can't wait, anyway."

  "But Josh, it's only three-thirty!"

  He gave her no response, waiting patiently until her stirring told him she had taken the hint. And when she finally realized what he wanted, she was in her spring coat and out the door with only a faint, whispered see you tomorrow left floating in the air.

  A man and his wife strolled past, fragmented by the plants. A group of teenagers laughing fresh from the high school and heading for the luncheonette. A gaudy red delivery truck. A black-and-tan limousine that seemed to drive by forever.

  Across the street the wooded lot that reached up to the post office shimmered, darkened, gave up four small boys carrying paper sacks in their hands. They were looking in them intently, and Josh couldn't help wondering until one of them pulled out a flower and held it up to the setting sun. A school project. Every kid in the town seemed to have a school project that required them to hunt as he had in his backyard jungle.

  He began tapping a finger, looked down and saw he was striking the folder. He turned it over quickly, shuddering, and set himself to concentrate on the messages Felicity left him. Concentrated, and centered, and cupped his hands under his chin.

  Andy.

  All right, he told himself, let's get down to basics and stop this bullshit about men with one arm.

  Andy. Andrea. Andrea Murdoch. Take her out, Don had asked him; take her out and help me get her out of my hair. He wondered if Murdoch had really known what he was doing.

  Andrea. Andy. A woman he had never taken into the fortress of his arms, though he instinctively knew she would fit there without strain. Hair of the blackest, most radiant kind that swooped to her shoulders in a cascade of midnight. Eyes and eyebrows the same, just the same, framing and marking a face neither magnificent nor dreamlike; a face, however, that made you look twice to see what it had that made you look the first time. A smile that was private, and a slight tilting of her head as though the angle would reveal a new dimension.

  She had no job, and did not want one. As Don had told him, she remained on the f
arm with her father to coddle him in his moods, type his correspondence, copy-edit and type the final manuscripts of his books. She also ran his errands when he demanded his privacy, kept visitors away to keep him from wandering.

  She was, he had discovered, wonderfully taken with walking through the woods and across the fields, the wind permanently, it seemed, tangling her hair and blessing her cheeks with a gentle weathered glow. She haunted the orchards and exclaimed over the new fruit, kneeled in the garden and hacked at the weeds that threatened her children.

  Andrea. Andy.

  The first time he had seen her he had ached to bed her; the second time, she had consented to go with him (Don lurking in the background and winking his approval) while he traced what he had hoped were the outlines of an old farmstead not mentioned in the records. Silently watching as he crawled through the brush. The questions she asked few and pertinent. Not once drifting close enough to hold his hand if he wanted, yet not drifting far enough to warn him of exclusion.

  When he dreamed of her it was conscious; when he spoke with her alone he could not help but stutter. And the idea that she might actually be, might honestly be annoyed just because he hadn't stopped by this afternoon excited him so much he couldn't think straight for an hour.

  But the hour finally passed, and his ex-wife was remembered and Felicity's sometime longing violet eyes. He coughed loudly, forcedly, rubbing his face as hard as he could and deciding he had best not find some stupid excuse to get involved. Once burned and twice shy; but it didn't mean he couldn't be a fool if he gave it half a try.

  The teenagers ran by again, and he suddenly realized just how he'd been behaving. And when the telephone rang he had nearly convinced himself it was time to head home and remember his age.

  It was Melissa Thames.

  "Joshua Miller, were you lucky out there for a change?"

  He grinned at the receiver. "Now, if I were, I'd be out at your place, right? And what's all this about a Mohawk bowl?"

  "Oh, I don't know," she said airily. "It was just something that popped into my head. You know how I am, Joshua. And I honestly think that Miss Lancaster of yours was ready to laugh in my face."

  "No," he said, hearing the lie. "Fel wouldn't do that to you, Mrs. Thames."

  "The hell she wouldn't. She's done it before."

  "I'll remind her to be more thoughtful."

  "Much good it'll do you."

  He frowned, then, and put a finger to the side of his nose. Rubbed it. Passed it under his eye and dropped it to push once at her folder. "Mrs. Thames, is there . . . it's none of my business, but is there something the matter?"

  "No . . . not really," she told him, a cross between annoyance and the first stirring of a martyr. "Well. . . yes. It's just as well you didn't come out here, Joshua. I've had a tragedy today, and I'm just not in the mood."

  It occurred to him that to ask about it might be tantamount to inviting disaster. Her last tragedy had been a stray and perverse strip of wallpaper in the maid's cottage that did not quite match the rest of the wall. He had offered to stop by and take a look, had done so before he'd known what he was doing, and ended up spending the next three days repapering under her less than expert guidance. If he hadn't enjoyed her company so much he would have been livid.

  In spite of himself he asked her anyway.

  "It's Thelma Saporral," she said, and he almost missed the tightness in her voice that controlled her speaking.

  "I . . . I'm afraid I don't know her, Mrs. Thames. The name isn't familiar, anyway. Is she one of your ladies?"

  Mrs. Thames' "ladies" were a group of women who met regularly at her home on the pike, a self-proclaimed and unabashed gossip session they would not dignify by calling it a club, or a society, or a charitable organization. Though they had in fact done a great deal of work at the hospital, at the schools and college, raised funds after hurricanes and fires and such, their primary purpose was the passing of news (the worse the better) from one home to another. The telephone had been eschewed for all but emergencies; face-to-face gossip was much more exciting.

  "Mrs. Thames, was she? One of your ladies, I mean."

  "I'm afraid so, Joshua."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  There was pause, a rustling. "I don't mean she's dead, silly. Though she very well might be, for all I know, for all those idiots will tell me over there. She's . . . well, she's gone, Joshua. Just . . . gone."

  He leaned back in his chair and wrapped the phone cord around his wrist. "I don't understand. Gone where?"

  A clearing of her throat, a distant whispering from the radio. "She's been in the hospital, you know . . . well, of course you wouldn't know, would you. Well, she has been. She had a seizure last week, her heart or her spleen or whatever it was that wasn't kicking around in there properly. And she was in the Intensive Care ward the last I heard.

  "Well, I was feeling awfully chipper after I left your office today, and I recalled it was her birthday—seventy if she was a day, though she said sixty-five—so I thought I would drop by and let her know how the last meeting went. And would you believe it, Joshua? She was . . . she was gone." The brusque snap of her fingers. "Just like that." She snapped them again.

  He frowned, somewhat bewildered. "Now wait a minute, Mrs. Thames, hold on a minute. You just said . . . do you mean—"

  "Gone, Joshua, gone! My lord, aren't you listening over there? Have you got potatoes in your ears? She was gone! Gone from her bed. I walked up there and her room was empty, her clothes gone, and when I checked quickly with the telephone . . . I mean, when I called her home there was no answer at all."

  "Ah," he said, grinning at last. "She walked out."

  A loud, nearly wailing sigh made him take the receiver from his ear, stare at it, bring it back cautiously.

  "Joshua . . . love . . . Thelma Saporral was hooked body and soul to one of those ugly little machines with all the lights and the beeps and things like that. She looked like she was on a television program, one of those true-to-life things. She couldn't have walked out if she tried."

  "You asked the nurses, of course."

  A clear tone for tolerance now, for understandable, but lamentable, stupidity. "I spoke very sternly with them, yes I did. But it was change of shift or something foolish like that, and the girls didn't even know Thelma at all. Well, one of them did, but she was worse than useless. The trouble is, I'm not family so I couldn't really let loose, if you know what I mean. In fact, Thelma, for all her talk, doesn't have any family left at all as I recall. It's all very upsetting, Joshua. Very upsetting."

  He nodded. "I'm sure it is, Mrs. Thames." But, he thought, you should have heard what I heard today; old ladies walking out of hospitals don't hold a candle to dead men leaving an arm behind at an accident.

  "She'll turn up, of course."

  He did not miss the plea. "Sure she will," he told her as gently as he could. "I assume she wasn't as well . . . she wasn't in as good health overall as you are, Mrs. Thames, so she couldn't have gotten very far. Don't worry, believe me. And if you want, I'll call my friend, Sergeant Borg, at the police station and ask him to—"

  "Done," she said, abruptly business again. "I have done my duty, Joshua. Thelma always was a bit nuts, you know. Thought she was the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. She heard voices all the time."

  "Yes, but did she smoke?"

  "Joshua!" But the laughter was there, and the relief, and when she finally rang off with a promise he would come to dinner one night the next week, he felt considerably better. The oppression that had filled the office had been lifted, the air outside less hazed with memory's shadows.

  He knew what his problem was—or a major part of it, at least: Andrea Murdoch. And his life was filled enough as it was without complicating matters with affairs that promised more than he might be able to deliver. And though his seeing Andrea could scarcely be called an affair (except of and in the mind), the potential was there, and it was making him increasingly nervous.
r />   Which in turn . . . in turn . . .

  He rose quickly before his confusion overwhelmed him. As he reached for his jacket, however, he realized that emotional backpedaling powered by rationalization was getting to be an art with him, an art he would just as soon not bother to master. One of these days (and if he kept it up, it wouldn't be in the distant future) he knew he was going to slam into a wall he did not see coming, or drop over a cliff.

  On the other hand . . .

  "Stop it, damnit!"

  He closed his eyes tightly, held his arms rigid at his sides. If there were any sure way of driving himself over the brink, this was it. This, and the dead man, and the bird, and the shadowing.

  He paused, then, with one arm halfway through a sleeve and stared at the telephone. Call now, call later. She might be waiting. You haven't eaten all day. His stomach muttered, and he decided to call later. Then he flipped over Mrs. Thames' folder and took an eraser to the sketch of the robin.

  One of those days; tomorrow would be better.

  But as he walked out the door his fingers were crossed.

  Chapter 6

  Once outside, with the door locked behind him and his cap pulled firmly down over his hair, Josh decided he did not want to head home right away. The place would be, today, too empty; rooms filled with his life and his living . . . and just too damned empty. And the thought of his having to stand by the stove waiting for a meal to coalesce out of chaos made him grimace. There had to be energy, and suddenly he didn't have it. Not after the plow and the arm and Andy and the look in Felicity's eyes.