She shook her head. “Can’t. Daddy’ll be here any minute. We’re looking at cars. I’ll be sixteen next week, you know!”
She smiled for the first time since she’d arrived for the tutoring session. She hauled the strap of her hot pink backpack over one shoulder and stood.
“That guy Vern was right about this,” she said, fingering a corner the crumpled bedspread. “That pattern is gross.”
Everybody’s a critic, I thought after I bid her farewell at the front door. Since the abrupt incarceration of her mother several months ago, Serry’s father had picked up the reins of parenthood and done much better that I’d expected, though he tended to continue spoiling her.
I was turning away from the door and making mental plans to donate the bedspread to the local charity shop when I spotted a dejected figure trudging up the front walk. It was Alec, and from the looks of him, the news was not good.
He brightened at the sight of me and allowed me to escort him to the kitchen, where he sat heavily. “Dear friends, t’was a debacle,” he announced.
Vern, who had risen from the big round kitchen table, about to leave, sat back down again. He shot me a quizzical glance. What’s this all about?
“Alec’s research grants. The corporate ones.”
“They’re gone, done, finished.” Hester slid a cup of hot water and a teabag Alec’s way, and he accepted it with a nod of thanks.
“Gone? You mean all of them?” Apparently Vern’s grudge didn’t extend to the professor, I was glad to notice.
Alec’s hand shook as he dipped the teabag in the water. “All. Every blessed one. Times are truly hard. I can’t really blame them. I’m an expensive luxury, I suppose.”
“But you are still teaching, right?”
Alec ran a hand over his face and adjusted his shoulders. He took a deep breath.
“Right you are, Amelia! ’Tis the saving grace. I still have young minds to mold and a living to earn. Mustn’t let discouragement get the better of me. It’s a tool of the enemy, you know.”
He nodded sharply. It was what I’d always admired about this admittedly eccentric fellow. He was brave, in his own particular way.
“Yeah, but—”
As I had on other occasions, I kicked Vern gently under the table.
He glanced at me but said no more.
“I imagine this puts some of your plans on hold,” I said, looking at Alec significantly.
He understood what I meant. “Aye, it does, indeed.”
I could see a tear glistening in his eye. He blinked it away.
“Still, I’m glad to have my dear friends about me when I read this.” He pulled a long envelope from an inside pocket. “I retrieved it from my box over at the post office. It’s from a law firm. Who knows what fresh . . . cataclysm it signals?”
He spoke hesitantly, as though struggling for composure, before running his thumb under the envelope’s flap. He tore it open and extracted a two-page letter. Patting his pockets, he pulled out a pair of reading glasses and began to peruse the document, muttering to himself.
The rest of us tactfully engaged ourselves in other things. Hester put a refilled plate of lemon cookies on the table and took a seat, stirring a mug of coffee. Vern went to the refrigerator and topped off his glass of milk. Carefully waiting my turn at the fridge, I followed suit and poured some orange juice. When we had all finished the milling around, attention returned to Alec, who was still whispering to himself as he read the last page of the letter. “Yours respectfully, Benjamin Deeming, et al, Attorneys at Law.” He took off his glasses and looked around the table with a sad smile. “Oh my.”
Vern could stand it no longer. “What is it, Alec? Do you still have your boat?”
“For the time being, it seems. This was a different matter entirely.” Slowly, Alec refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. “It’s sad news, but not totally unexpected. An old friend of mine has died and left me a little something that he made for me. I should receive a package in the near future.”
We all made sympathetic murmurs. “Who was it?”
“His name was Jacob Rabideau, but we all called him Nimrod.”
Vern grimaced. “Nimrod? What kind of name is that?”
Alec smiled slightly. “It’s from the Bible. Nimrod was called a mighty hunter before the Lord. Jacob took the name for himself and was a little embarrassed when he learned later that in the Bible Nimrod wasn’t such a reputable character. But it was too late. The name stuck like glue.”
“How did you know him?” I asked. “Was he one of your students?”
Alec chuckled sadly. “No, it was rather the other way ’round. I was just a young fellow, a college student, working in the summer at the general store downstate at Dunn’s Vale. He came into town from time to time to trade. The owner of the store, Mr. Dunn, would trade supplies for wood carvings the old man made.” He tapped the letter with his finger. “Seems he left me some of his handiwork.”
“They must of been good carvings, then.”
I cringed inwardly, but I never corrected Hester’s grammar. It would have, not of, hurt her feelings.
“Oh, they were. Detailed and beautiful: animals, trees, flowers, all kinds of things. He was a hermit, kept to himself for the most part. He preferred to live alone in the woods, but he was by no means an uneducated man.”
Alec drained his cup of tea and dabbed at his moustache with a paper napkin. “We became friends. He had a nickname for me: Double Al, because of my name, y’see. Mr. Dunn and I would hunt down used books for him in various places, library discards, yard sales, and the like. All kinds of books: Shakespeare, novels, philosophy, Bible commentary. I looked forward to his visits because he’d discuss what he’d read with me. I was a student then and just lapped up the knowledge. I was seeking my place in the world, y’understand. And he helped me find it.”
“He did?” I peered eagerly through this tiny window into Alec’s mysterious past.
“Oh, aye, he surely did. You must remind me to tell you the details sometime.” He looked around at our eager faces. “Forgive me, friends, but I must be off. I have many things to do, packing up, such things as that.”
Vern rose. “Me too.” He looked down at Alec. “Sorry about your friend and, um, everything else.”
“I’m grateful for your company and your kindness.”
Vern walked out with him. I gathered my tutoring materials and headed for the office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I was in a thoughtful mood as I finished loading the dishwasher at home the next day, thinking about that long-ago summer.
It’s strange, I thought, but sometimes when you come across a particular subject, it will start springing up again and again.
So it was with Jamison’s Adirondack Summer Theatre. First Danny’s picture in the tabloid and reminiscing with Gil, then that computer session with Lily, and, of course, Dierdre’s party for Terence at Chez Prentice, of all places. It wasn’t a very important subject, really, but I found that thinking back over those times took my mind off my swollen ankles, heartburn, and all those restroom visits, as well as Alec’s unfortunate news.
A knock on the door interrupted my reverie.
It was Alec himself. Without any preliminary pleasantries, he walked in and plunked a cardboard carton down on the coffee table.
“I’ve an appointment at my lawyer’s about the Sweet Afton shortly, but I had to stop by and show you what the UPS man brought me today. It’s from Nimrod’s lawyer. Look!”
He pulled open the tabs. Atop a snow bank of Styrofoam peanuts sat a package swathed in great quantities of bubble wrap. Alec unrolled and unrolled until he revealed a brown wooden rectangle a little smaller than a cigar box.
“Look! He made this. For me! Dear old fellow carved this himself!” He handed it over.
I sat on the sofa and turned the box to examine all the sides. “Alec, it’s wonderful! All the little animals and plants. Look, there’s a fawn, and a r
accoon! What a wonderful gift.” I handed it back.
“Here’s my initials.” He turned it around and traced the initials AAA carved into the top. I could almost hear the lump in his throat. “That’s how I know he did it for me.”
“A is your middle initial? I don’t think I ever heard your middle name.”
He chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t stand for Automobile, as some might think. It’s for Artair, a form of Arthur. Means bear, I believe. That’s what my mother always told me.”
I waited for more information about his mother, but none came.
“Look,” I said, pointing again. “Those are bears right there.” The initials were framed by two standing bears, forming parentheses around the letters.
Alec squinted at the carving. “Why, so they are!” He shook his head, pulled out a large handkerchief and blew his nose. “Oh my. Oh my. The dear old fellow.”
I asked the obvious. “What’s inside?”
He blinked rapidly. “Why, you know, I was so taken with the box itself, I never got around to looking. Let’s see.” A small leather loop, fastened to a tiny knob, held the thick top closed.
Inside was a well-worn leather-bound book, bearing the embossed word Journal on the cover.
“He probably made the box to fit this book!”
“I believe you’re right, Amelia. The dear old fellow.” He gently pried the book out of the box and opened it. “Ah, yes, this is what I hoped it was; not very valuable, per se, but a treasure to me.” He turned the first page gently. “Listen to this: ‘I began my adventure a month ago, and I have decided make note of it in this book so people in the future will know how to live in the woods.’ ”
“How fascinating! May I look at it?”
Alec handed the book to me and I turned the pages carefully. Nimrod Rabideau had written with a slanted and loopy hand that took some concentration to read. Some of the entries were several pages long, some were just a few lines.
Clearly, he hadn’t written in it every day. There were year-long gaps here and there, but every page of the book was covered with writing.
“Alec,” I said, turning back to the last few pages, “this goes back more than forty years. Here’s a page labeled Recipes. ‘For rabbit stew: One large rabbit, skinned and cut up. Save entrails.’ ” I shuddered. “He really did live off the land, didn’t he?”
“Aye.” Alec smiled gently. “He once said he would give me a recipe for pickled beaver tail, but I’m fairly sure it was a joke.” He took the book back and closed it with a kind of reverence. “He could be a humorous old gent sometimes.” He ran a finger under one eye and turned away for a few seconds. “As soon as I get all this rigmarole straightened out, I’ll take the time to sit down and read it straight through.”
“You promised to tell me how Nimrod helped you find yourself.”
“Oh, yes. It’ll take a few minutes. Could we sit?”
We sat.
“I may’ve told ye,” Alec said as he settled back into the sofa across from me, “that I spent a number of years at Dunn’s Vale, y’know, downstate, working at a general store.” He sighed. “It’s gone now, of course.”
He hadn’t told me anything about his early life, but I didn’t want to interrupt the stream of thought, so I just said, “Go on.”
The box balanced on one knee, he stroked the carvings with his fingers as he spoke. “I was between degrees, y’might say. I’d completed my bachelor’s in English literature, but I was still at loose ends—”
“Literature?” I blurted. “I always thought you were more of a science major.”
“Well, no, not truly. M’heart is still in stories and poems and the hymns, of course. I got my hymn habit from him, too, you know?”
I shook my head.
He laughed. “Oh, yes, Nimrod had a fine voice, and it carried, let me tell you. The hymns would float on the wind from the woods at night.”
“I suppose some people complained.”
“Well, there were a few dust-ups on the subject, though he was a true tenor, with an excellent sense of pitch. It’s not like he was caterwauling. His favorite was ‘A Mighty Fortress.’ I can still almost hear him: ‘A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.’ ” Alec also had a fine voice. “Of course, the saw-playing didn’t help.”
“Saw playing?” I laughed at the ludicrous mental picture.
“Oh yes. He’d taken it up right before I met him. He ordered the whole kit and caboodle—a saw, a bow, and a music book—from a catalog and taught himself. I must admit, it was a little, well, shrill when he played it. And the sound did carry a long way, poor fellow.”
For a moment, Alec was lost in his thoughts. He looked up and said, “He was a godly man too. Knew his Bible front to back.”
“How old was he?”
He scratched his head. “I’m not sure. He’d been in the woods more than thirty years when I met him, he told me, so I expect he was in his nineties, at least, when he died.”
I remembered another question. “So why did you change from English to science?”
“Oh, yes, therein lies the nubbin of the story, Amelia. He’s the one who told me about the creature in Lake Champlain!”
“Really! And you were intrigued?”
“Of course! To meet a real eyewitness—”
“Wait! Eyewitness? Did he claim to have actually seen this creature?”
Alec smiled and nodded. “He came to the store the day after, and he was still shaken up. He’d lost his fishing rod to the animal—”
“He what?” I squeaked. “Was he fishing for the thing?”
Alec chuckled. “No, of course not. He told me that’s how he lost the rod. The thing jerked it right of his hand.”
“And you believed his story.”
Alec’s broad, hairy face took on an earnest expression. “Oh yes. He was the most honest man I ever knew. He liked to quote the Bible: ‘God hates a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.’ ”
For some reason, the image of Danny DiNicco’s bloodstained desk popped randomly into my mind. Innocent blood? Was Danny an innocent, or was he involved in something nefarious that destroyed him in the end? Had he, himself, shed innocent blood?
I blinked to clear my mind of the thought. “Are you going to Nimrod’s funeral? I mean, is there going to be one?”
“No. He requested to be buried with his family members. His lawyer told me Nimrod’s father owned a farm a little west of here, and there’s a small family cemetery. It’s been preserved, fenced off and all, but it’s in the middle of a housing development now. The lawyer will have to get permission to have him buried there. It doesn’t appear that he left enough funds to pay for a casket, but I’m not going to let him go without. I’ve a little put by, and if the family plot isn’t available, we’ll find another place to put him to rest.”
I smiled at him. “You’re a good man, Alec.”
“He was good to me. I owe him.” He sighed. “And I’d be grateful if you’d explain that to your friend, Miss Lily. She doesn’t understand my attachment to the old chap.”
“I’ll try. He was your mentor, Alec. A father figure.”
“That he was, m’dear.”
I broached the subject we had been avoiding. “So the proposal plans are off, I take it?”
He looked at me sadly. “I couldn’t possibly ask a woman like Lily to marry a pauper like m’self under such circumstances. The withdrawal of corporate funds put the last nail i’ the coffin of that vain dream.”
“It’s shouldn’t matter, Alec. You love her.”
“So I do. And you’re right, it shouldn’t matter, but it does.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
He shot out his sleeve and glanced at his watch. “I have that lawyer’s appointment directly.” He began to wrap up the box in the bubble wrap.
“Don’t you want to put the journal inside?”
“Will ye hold onto it for the time being? I know you’l
l take good care of it, and it might amuse ye while ye wait for the babe to arrive, so to speak.”
What with my tutoring work and various B&B duties, I was hardly lying around munching bonbons all the livelong day, but Alec seemed to have forgotten that. We headed down the hall to the front door.
“I’ll be glad to keep the book for you, Alec. Thank you for trusting me with it.”
I was honored that Alec would let me examine his treasure, but I wasn’t looking forward to trying to read it. Nimrod’s spidery handwriting would be a real challenge to anybody.
“I’m obliged to ye. It’ll gie me an excuse to visit as well.” Alec gave me a gruff hug with his free arm.
“You know you don’t need one. Come back any time.”
He gave me a melancholy smile and a wave as he drove away.
I closed the door and returned to what passed for a living room in our little lake house. I picked up the journal with the idea of placing it safely in our overstuffed bookcase, but the leather cover slipped from my grasp and the book fell on its back, open to a densely-written page. As I stooped to pick it up, I spotted a curious word among all the curlicues: “Behemoth.”
“What on earth?”
Leaving the lunch dishes to soak in the sink, I sat on the sofa and began the arduous, eye-stinging job of reading Nimrod’s words.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In the Bible, there’s something called a Behemoth, a mighty creature. (It’s in the Book of Job.) And now I know it’s real. It’s what old Champlain himself saw; the Indians too. At least they say so in their legends.
I don’t often go all the way down the mountain to the lake (there’s a stream runs near my cabin), but my larder was getting bare and today I thought the fishing might be some better at the lake. I didn’t feel like digging night crawlers, so I used squares of bacon fat for bait. Double Al had said I could borrow his little boat anytime, so I did and started fishing within sight of the old Split Rock Lighthouse.
There I sat, letting the bait sink deeper and deeper off my port side. I knew the big fish were likely on the bottom, so I wasn’t expecting an immediate hit. All of a sudden, there was this tremendous pull. I immediately set the drag on the reel as high as it would go because this fish was peeling line off the reel like nothing I have ever seen before. In a few seconds I was already into the backing and watching the last 100 yards disappear. At this rate I was afraid the rod would be pulled from my hands before whatever was on the hook could break the link.
Murder in the Past Tense (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Page 15