“A Booker’s for Mr. Coleman and a glass of water for Mrs. Coleman.”
“Ruth, please.”
“Ruth, do you prefer still or sparkling?” Morgan said.
“Oh, just tap water for me.”
Walter took hold of his wife’s elbow and muttered, “You don’t want it from the tap.”
“Of course!” Morgan said. “We have Evian or Fiji or… what’s that neat bottle?”
“Voss?” said her husband. With a wry grin he added: “From the frigid aquifers of Norway.” Under his apron he was wearing a light-blue gingham button-down shirt and shorts that actually looked pink.
“Tap is fine,” Ruth said. “Really.”
“Honey,” Walter said. “You know about the well.”
“The well?” Hutch said.
“Any kind of bottled water would be fine for her,” Walter said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Is something wrong with our well?” asked Hutch.
“They didn’t tell you when you bought the house?”
“Tell us what?” Morgan said. “Is something wrong with the well water? Hutch, I thought we had it tested.”
“We did. They said it was a little hard, maybe, but otherwise pure and clean as the driven snow.”
“Charlie sold you the house, right?”
Hutch nodded. “Right…?”
“Charlie,” Walter said with a low chuckle. “I love him like a brother, but you know, when you shake hands with him you count your fingers afterward.”
“You mean he’s… dishonest?” Morgan said, eyes wide.
“Charlie’s the salt of the earth,” Walter said. “Great guy. Great guy. But, well, you know… Like they say, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” He shrugged. “Who tested your well water? Kenny Fisher?”
“I think that was his name,” Hutch said slowly.
“Sure,” Walter said, nodding. “The only game in town. Kenny and Charlie are old pals. Kenny’s never gonna screw up one of Charlie’s sales. Anyways, all that hooey about herbicides and pesticides and weed killers and stuff? There’s no scientific proof it causes birth defects or bladder cancer or leukemia or what have you. That’s all just scare talk. No proof.”
“Walter,” Ruth said, “I never heard anything about their well water. Where are you getting all this?”
“Sweetie, if you ever joined us for poker night you’d know a lot more about what’s going on in this town than who’s hitting the bottle too much.” He winked at the young couple. “There’s a reason they call us a quaint drinking town with a fishing problem.”
Morgan’s mouth was gaping open, and her husband’s face was flushed.
“I always wondered,” Walter said, “why the Murdoch kid was born, you know, feebleminded. They insisted it didn’t run in the family, so you had to think, well, what if it was the water?”
“I think Estelle had a sister with developmental problems,” said Ruth.
“Who can ever know with these things?” Walter said.
“You know, I’d love a tour,” Ruth said hastily. “Can you believe we’ve lived next door for forty-three years and this is the first time we’ve ever been inside this house? Walter spent plenty of time over here, but not me.”
“Sure,” Morgan said, sounding subdued. “Let’s get some drinks first. Hutch, I’ll have a bourbon, too, come to think of it.”
“Bourbon and water, coming up,” Hutch said.
“Use the Evian,” said his wife.
While Morgan showed Ruth around, the men stood next to the grill, highball glasses in their hands. It was one of those immense stainless steel numbers the size of a Volkswagen. The dog whined and pawed at the screen door from inside. “So the traffic noise don’t bother you?” Walter said casually, watching Hutch flip bell peppers, orange and yellow and red. They had nice black stripes on them from the grill.
“You know, I don’t even notice it anymore,” Hutch said.
“No, you wouldn’t. Not consciously.” Walter took a long sip. In the lull, the whoosh of car tires on Route 6 seemed particularly loud. Then, as if on cue, came the blat of a motorcycle. “You probably saw that thing in the Sunday paper a few weeks back about how noise pollution can raise your blood pressure and give you anxiety and disrupt your sleep and what have you. Damages the fetus worst of all. Developmentally and all that. Scary stuff. But you folks probably aren’t planning to have kids anytime soon, so it’s no big whoop.”
Walter could hear the young man swallow hard.
“We’ve been talking about hiring one of those acoustic consultants to design a noise barrier fence on the highway side,” Hutch said.
“Why not,” Walter said, nodding. “Worst that happens, you’re out twenty, thirty thousand bucks. Call it an experiment, right? Though I always wondered if maybe they’re selling you a bill of goods. It never works like they tell you.”
“Actually, they’re supposed to cut down noise as much as ten decibels.”
“Build it high enough, maybe. Twelve-foot fence gonna look like the Berlin Wall, though.”
Hutch shrugged. “We could sort of mask it with trees. Leyland cypresses, maybe.”
“Huh,” Walter said, unconvinced. “Sure. You might get lucky.”
“How’s that?”
“Your Leyland cypresses don’t much like our winters.”
“Ah.” Hutch tried to turn a piece of zucchini, but it slipped through the cooking grate and landed in the coals with a hiss. The fire flared and crackled.
“Not helping you much, am I?”
Hutch chuckled. “You’re supervising,” he said. “Male bonding. Whatever.”
Hutch’s hair was thinning on top, Walter saw. The guy would probably be bald in a couple of years easy.
After a long pause, Walter said: “Well, I’m glad the house finally sold.”
“This house?”
“You musta got a real nice deal on it.”
“I—I thought it was on the market for only a couple of weeks.”
“Going on six years, more like.”
Hutch looked surprised. “That can’t be true.”
“Oh, Charlie. Man, I love him to death, but he musta relisted this house a dozen times over the years. Like they say, the last key in the bunch opens the lock. Guy could sell snow to an Eskimo.”
“Wh—what was…? Well, they must have way overpriced it, then. We put in an offer half an hour after we saw this place.” Hutch gestured widely with his hand, indicating not just the house but the sweep of open land. “You don’t come across eighteenth-century Cape houses in this condition every day, you know, with this much land.”
“Oh, it wasn’t the price,” Walter said.
“What—what do you mean, it wasn’t the price?”
Walter noticed something and pointed. “What’s that over there, a garden?” The sun was setting and the vast expanse of lawn was bathed in an ochre glow. The shadows had grown long. Walter’s vision wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, but he could make out a large rectangular plot fenced in by chicken wire and timber posts. It was situated right on the edge of the woods. That narrow strip of forest separated this house from Walter’s farm.
Hutch looked and said, “My tomato garden. What about the house?”
“Just tomatoes in there, huh?”
“Heirloom. Twenty-seven different varieties.”
“Any reason you put it way the heck over there? Seems like you’d get a hell of a lot more full sun if you moved it away from the trees.”
“Well, you know, it’s interesting: I noticed the grass over there was darker and greener and way taller than the grass next to it, even though it had just been mowed a few days before. I figured that for whatever reason the soil there was better. Just naturally richer.”
Walter stared at the tomato garden for a long time. Suddenly his sun-creased old face had grown taut. He seemed to be deep in thought, and not happy thought.
“What is it?” said Hutch.
After a f
ew seconds, Walter shook his head. “Huh? Nothing.”
“Well, as I was saying, maybe it’s the leaves from the trees—you know, they decay over the years and form a rich loam or compost or humus, I’m not even sure what you call it. But whatever it is, the dirt there is incredibly rich. I’ve never seen anything like it—the plants are immense and healthy and they’re bearing loads of fruit, and they’re huge. And the best I’ve ever tasted. You’ll see what I mean—Morgan is making her tomato salad for dinner. We’ll give you some to take home—we have way more than we can possibly eat.”
The old man looked shaken. He cleared his throat. “Who dug your garden for you?”
“You really must think Morgan and I are just a couple of spoiled yuppies from the city,” Hutch said, emboldened by the alcohol. “I did it myself, put the plants in myself, staked them myself. I like gardening. I actually find it relaxing.”
“You come across anything?”
“Excuse me?”
“When you dug the garden, I mean.”
“A lot of roots and some rocks is all.” Hutch gave him a puzzled glance. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me that’s where the old cesspool was, huh?” He grinned wickedly as if to show he was onto the old man’s tricks.
“Oh, no,” Walter said softly. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.”
“Then what?”
Walter looked pensive. Like he couldn’t decide how to answer. Finally he said, “I don’t suppose you have any more of that fancy bourbon?”
Dinner was punctuated by long, uneasy silences. The clinking of silverware, the sounds of chewing and smacking and swallowing seemed unusually loud. Ruth exclaimed over the cold cucumber soup and asked if that interesting flavor was fresh cilantro. The steaks were perfect, charred on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside, and Ruth asked Hutch how he grilled steaks as good as what you’d get at one of those expensive steakhouses in New York City. When Hutch revealed his secret—you coat the steaks in an emulsion of clarified butter and oil and kosher salt before putting them on a very hot fire, and turn them only once—he didn’t sound very enthusiastic. He barely talked at all.
Ruth did her best to lighten the mood by telling funny stories about some of the more colorful characters who lived here year-round: the bossy postmistress who had a habit of “misplacing” your mail under a sorting table if she took a dislike to you; the elderly gentleman who had a llama farm and rode a motorcycle; the once-famous B-movie star who never left his house. Morgan smiled and laughed politely and made sure everyone’s wineglass was replenished with the Pinot Noir from Oregon that had become their house red.
“Will you look at these tomatoes?” Ruth said after one particularly long stretch of silence. A wicker basket of cheerfully colored but strangely misshapen tomatoes sat in the middle of the antique French country farm table, an unusual centerpiece. “How extraordinary.”
“This one’s my favorite,” Morgan said, selecting a bulbous deep-red one. “Don’t you think it’s obscene?”
“Oh!” Ruth said, giggling. The tomato’s deep cleft looked almost lewd, like a buxom woman’s cleavage. “What sort of tomato is that?”
“That’s called a Mortgage Lifter,” said Hutch in a brittle, almost annoyed tone. “Heirloom tomatoes have all sorts of funny names.”
“Well, I think it looks just like the buttocks of a young boy,” Walter said.
After several seconds of awkward silence, Ruth coughed.
Morgan got up to go to the kitchen, but on the way she turned around. “Oh, Hutch, you should ask Walter about the chipmunks.”
“Chipmunks?” Ruth said.
“Yeah,” Hutch said, perking up a bit. “I think the chipmunks are eating my tomatoes. It’s like they wait for the tomatoes to get absolutely, perfectly ripe and then they take a bite—one single bite per tomato—like they’re sampling each one. Then of course you have to throw them away, unless you want to catch rabies. It drives me nuts.”
“Oh, sure,” Walter said. “It’s a cycle around here. They extend the hunting season so’s people can shoot more coyotes because they’re eating too many house pets. And of course coyotes eat chipmunks, so fewer coyotes, more chipmunks.”
“Oh, but they’re so cute!” Morgan said.
“They’re cute until they eat your blueberries and raspberries and tomatoes, and then they’re not so cute.”
“So what do you do?” Morgan asked.
“Snap traps.”
“Like—like rattraps?”
“Nah, mousetraps’ll do you just fine. Put a little dab of peanut butter on there and you’ll catch ’em easy.”
“Well, I don’t think I could do that,” Hutch said. “I couldn’t kill a chipmunk.”
“Do those Havahart traps work on chipmunks?” asked Morgan, still standing at the kitchen door. “Catch and release them somewhere?”
“Oh, no,” Walter said with a deep, rumbling laugh. “You gotta kill the little buggers. Snap their little necks.” He saw their horrified expressions. “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Oh!” Morgan said. “I almost forgot!” She excused herself and then returned from the kitchen with a platter. “Hutch’s tomatoes,” she announced.
“Come on, it’s your great recipe,” Hutch said modestly.
“Olive oil and a touch of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of sea salt is hardly a recipe, honey,” Morgan said, dishing tomato salad onto salad plates. “Walter?”
“Looks tempting,” Walter said. “But I’ll pass.”
Hutch glared at him. “Something wrong with the tomatoes?”
“Hutch!” Morgan said.
“Oh, these tomatoes are wonderful!” Ruth exclaimed, fork poised in midair. “I don’t know what you did to them, but they’re just divine! Walter, you have to try Morgan’s tomato salad.”
Walter smiled but shook his head.
“Walter started telling me something about the tomato garden earlier,” Hutch said. “Right, Walter?”
The old man compressed his lips and appeared lost in thought.
“Did there used to be a toxic waste dump there, Walter?” Hutch smiled, but his voice was harsh and a bit too loud.
“Hutch,” Morgan said again.
“I’m sorry,” Walter said. “I really should have kept my mouth shut. There’s no reason you need to know the history. What’s past is past.”
“Walter, what are you doing?” Ruth said.
“History?” Morgan said.
“Please. Forget I ever mentioned it.”
“Walter, please,” Ruth said, placing her hand on top of his. “Stop it right now.”
Morgan and Hutch exchanged a quick glance, and then Hutch said, “No, I’d like to hear whatever it is that Walter doesn’t think we need to know.”
“Honey,” Morgan said.
Ruth shook her head and exhaled noisily. “Oh, dear.”
“I just don’t think it’s right that no one told them about the house,” Walter said to her.
“Walter,” Ruth said, “it’s past my bedtime.”
Morgan smiled and said lightly, “Well, now you have to tell us.”
Walter looked at her, then at her husband, his face grim. “All right.”
Ruth scowled.
“The Murdochs lived in this house for years,” Walter said. “Tom and Estelle and their son, Paulie. Nice folks.”
“You certainly spent a lot of time over here,” Ruth said crisply, “when Tom wasn’t around.”
Walter rolled his eyes. “Ruth, we’re not having this conversation again.”
Ruth shifted in her chair, sat up straighter, her lips pursed.
“Now, how long ago did it happen, Ruth?”
Ruth shook her head almost imperceptibly. She seemed to be pouting over some old hurt, a wound that still hadn’t healed.
“Eight years ago, I think it was,” Walter said. “Hard to believe it’s been that long.”
The young couple watche
d him intently.
“Tom and Estelle had gone to Boston for the weekend, and they left Paulie at home alone. He must have been sixteen, seventeen, and even if he wasn’t quite right in the head, he did fine on his own. When they came home, the house was empty. Nobody home. No Paulie.”
Ruth was studying her half-eaten tomato salad.
When a few seconds had passed, Hutch said, “And?”
“It was like he just up and vanished. Not a trace. They called everyone they knew in town and they drove around, and—nothing. He was gone. It was the damnedest thing.”
“What happened to him?” Morgan asked, sounding as if she didn’t want to know the answer.
“They put up signs everywhere. There were search parties. The police didn’t have any luck. Days went by, and then weeks and months.”
“Was he kidnapped or something?” Morgan asked.
“I bet he ran away,” Hutch said. “You wouldn’t believe how many teenagers leave home and just, I don’t know, live on the streets.”
“They sold the house, must have been a year later. They said they couldn’t live here. Too many memories of the kid. They moved down to Boca, but that didn’t last long. Estelle had a heart attack and died maybe a month or two after they moved.”
He went quiet, and Hutch mistakenly assumed the old man had finished his story. “I’m not really getting what this has to do with my tomatoes,” he said.
Walter fixed him with a beady stare. “The family that bought the house—I don’t even remember their names, they owned it so short a time—well, you know, the old cesspool wasn’t up to code, so the town made them put in a septic tank. New state law. They hired Jimmy Rice to do the excavation, isn’t that right?”
Ruth, still staring at her plate, nodded once.
“Jimmy was sitting in his backhoe loader digging the pit for the drain field, right about where the tomato garden is now, and when he emptied the bucket something caught his eye. Something bright red, like a piece of clothing, maybe.”
“No,” Morgan said, her voice tight.
“The damnedest thing. He got out of the cab and picked up this red plaid Elmer Fudd cap out of the dirt pile, and stuck to it was this white fragment of bone… I mean, Jimmy’s son went to grade school with Paulie, so of course he recognized the hat right away.”
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box Page 10