Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Rina? I thought she—”

  “No. The other one. The redhead.”

  Casey couldn’t believe it. Cora? Working the river? Cora Bowes? It had to be the heat; there was no other explanation. He tugged on the bill of his cap to block the glare off the slow water. Less than a hundred yards to Pennsylvania, but he had once been in the river on a dare and had felt the current lurking beneath the surface. Strong as he was, he had barely made it back to shore.

  Micah drank, face flushed and creased, eyes narrow under the captain’s cap, cigarette burning forgotten in his other hand.

  Casey watched him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Hot.”

  “Then don’t drink so much. Or, you could get out of the sun. That kind of makes sense, too.”

  Micah’s smile was brief, sarcastic. He flicked the cigarette into the water and pointed with his chin at the blasted oak. “Those bees.”

  “No honey, huh?”

  “No. They come at me last night.”

  “They did what?” He looked behind him, and saw nothing around or on the tree. Usually there was at least a handful of bees hovering over the hive. Still, even bees had to rest sometime, he supposed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Case, I got home from Mackey’s last night, and they were swarming over the river. Chased me to the house and hung around for nearly an hour before they left.”

  Casey stared pointedly at the can in the old man’s hand.

  Micah shook his head. “Nope. I had some maybe, but not that many. Last time you saw me shitfaced was when? Five, six years ago? Some birthday thing, right? Kay’s Doc’s?” He shook his head again. “Don’t matter. I wasn’t last night.”

  Casey didn’t know what to say, and so he said, “So maybe it was the weather. Back in Tennessee when I was a kid, we had a string of heat like this one August, and this big old bear, he must’ve been a hundred, he came into the middle of town, sat himself down in the middle of the street and wouldn’t move until somebody finally figured it out and brought him a pail of water.” He sipped, quickly now because the beer was already getting warm. “Damn thing emptied that pail twice. Then he stands up, crushes it with one paw, and heads back on home.” He laughed softly. “Half the town saw it and didn’t believe it, the other half didn’t see it and believed every word.”

  Micah didn’t smile. “Didn’t chase nobody though, did it.”

  “Come on, Mike, it’s not like they haven’t gone after you before, stealing their honey like you do.”

  “I harvest it,” the old man insisted.

  “Whatever. You take it, they don’t like it. Maybe—”

  A backfire turned their attention to the road.

  A car more rust than wheels chugged down the slope and backfired itself onto the parking apron. It almost didn’t make it, coming to a stop only when its front bumper nudged the rope. Todd climbed awkwardly out of the passenger side, wiping his face with a sleeve, sneering at the sky. A shorter man solidly round struggled out from behind the steering wheel, his gleaming midnight hair plastered straight back from his forehead, curled up at the collar in back. White shirt open at the throat, white trousers, white shoes.

  “You want to play tennis, Doc,” Micah said sourly, “you come to the wrong place.”

  “Casey,” said Mel Farber, “we’ve been looking all over for you. Where the hell have you been? We had an appointment this morning, in case you forgot.’’

  Casey lifted his beer in a nice to see you too toast.

  “Rev,” Todd said, “I think we got some trouble.”

  * * * *

  2

  They adjourned to the cabin porch where the shade brought them the fantasy of relief. Once settled—Lambert on the steps, the others on wood chairs that creaked at each shift—Casey gazed out across the river from his perch on the railing, watching shade and shadow darken the forest on the opposite bank. A breeze drifted over the water’s surface, rippling it, husking through the leaves, not cooling anything, but at least it moved.

  There was no mayor, no town council for Maple Landing. No rules were written or written down; what laws there were belonged to the state and county. There were no police; once or twice a day on a good day, a state trooper drove through, or someone from the county sheriff dropped by to show the flag. When trouble arose, the longevity factor took over— those who had been around the longest and weren’t feuding with half the town were consulted, arbitrated disputes, decided whether or not a higher authority needed to be informed or brought in.

  As the community’s only cleric, Casey had automatically been placed in that position, and after all this time, he still wasn’t sure he appreciated the honor. There were, despite the small resident number, too many egos and too many muddied points of view. He felt uncomfortable passing judgment; he’d much rather sit someone down on the riverbank or in his office, on the bench outside Tully’s store or in the Moonglow, and talk it out. Talk it to death, if he had to. Most times it worked, and seldom did anyone go away feeling slighted.

  From the expressions on their faces, however, he knew this wasn’t going to be one of those comparatively easy times.

  He lit a cigarette, grinned at the doctor’s disapproval, and suggested they get on with it before he fell asleep.

  “It’s Arlo,” Todd said, stretching out his legs, folding his hands across his belly.

  “What about him?”

  Todd looked to Mel, who pulled at his chin, his nose, massaged the side of his neck before saying, “That man last night, the one Arlo clobbered?” He stared at the floor. “I finally took him over to the hospital for X rays, just in case he’d been handed a concussion. He didn’t, as it turned out, just the laceration and a hell of a bump. But I found out a couple of things.”

  Micah passed out the beers. “Like what?’’

  “Like, his name is Cardiño Escobar.”

  Casey shrugged; it meant nothing to him. Nor, from his expression, to Micah either, who said, “What is he, some kind of Mafia?” No question the idea didn’t bother him a bit.

  “Close,” Mel said. “I recognized the name, and this morning I called a friend down in Trenton. It turns out Mr. Escobar is one of those gentlemen who are generally acknowledged to be crooks of medium water, nothing like the Mob, but it seems they have ambitions of more than the modest sort. Mr. Escobar has thus far been able to evade jail time. He works for a small group of other gentlemen, mostly from South America, who apparently have established quite a reputation here and in Pennsylvania for gambling operations, most likely murder, probably real-estate scams.”

  Micah drank. “So?”

  Todd sighed over his beer. “Jeez, Mike, use your head. What the hell does Arlo Mackey have to do with someone like that? Promoting oldies concerts?”

  Lambert shrugged. “How should I know?”

  “It’s like this,” Mel said earnestly, speaking directly to Casey. “Half this town owns most the other half, right? And we rent houses and cabins and shacks out whenever we can. Hunters, fishermen, families, the whole weekend and weekly rainbow. Lot of people’s extra, sometimes necessary income comes from that. Right? Right. So, you’ve walked around. Have you seen many For Rent signs out this season?”

  Casey didn’t have time to speak.

  “No,” the doctor answered for him. “Maybe nine or ten, tops. Why? Because last autumn, Arlo went around to the homeowners and offered to act as their agent, promising higher fees and bigger cuts than they’d been getting from their ads or wherever they’d been doing business before. And almost everyone who agreed to deal with him had their properties contracted for by the first of the year.”

  “So what if he makes a few bucks?” Micah asked impatiently. “So what?” He chuckled. “You afraid the Landing’s gonna be one of them Mafia meeting joints? Like they used to have in upstate New York?”

  “So one of the people who didn’t sign, you jackass, was Jack Manger.”

  Micah grunted.

  Casey re
membered it was after Christmas, right after the first of over a dozen weekly snowstorms had hit the area. The Landing had been cut off for two days. Manger, who lived on the Crest, had been walking home from the bar on the second day. A car without headlights came out of a side street, cut him down, and sped out of town. The man’s neck had been snapped on impact; Farber guessed he was dead before he hit the ground.

  Neither the state police nor the sheriff’s office had been able to find a thing.

  “Steve Wishum used his old agency. His place was gutted on New Year’s.”

  “Moved to Florida right after,” Todd reminded them.

  Mel looked at Casey again. “Georgia Williams fell down her cellar stairs and broke her hip.”

  “You saying Arlo did this?” Micah demanded incredulously. “Damn, you’re nuttier’n he is.”

  “I’m saying,” Mel told him with exaggerated patience, “that it’s awfully funny our hippie buddy Arlo should suddenly up and turn into a guitar-playing real-estate man, and the people who didn’t deal with him got themselves hurt. I’m saying,” he added, raising his voice to keep Lambert silent, “it’s awfully peculiar Arlo all of a sudden knows a man who specializes in this stuff.” He leaned back. “I’m saying there’s something going on, and I don’t think it’s over.”

  Casey listened to Micah argue coincidence and molehills, and as far as he could tell, the boatman was right. Not everyone who hadn’t worked with Arlo ended up like Manger, Wishum, or Georgia—who had never claimed she had been pushed or tripped anyway. A dizzy spell had done it, nothing more sinister than that.

  When the three finally hushed just shy of standing up and shouting, Todd looked at Casey straight-faced and said, “So what does God think of all this, Rev?”

  Casey closed his eyes, put a forefinger to each temple, and hummed a single note for several seconds before saying, “No answer. I think we’ve bored Him to sleep.”

  Micah snorted a laugh and rummaged in the cooler for another beer; Todd rolled his eyes; and Mel did his best to look stern, except that he ended up looking to Casey like a snarling puppy, which, he supposed, was the danger of such a young man falling into a role belonging to a man much older.

  “The thing is,” Casey told them once they had settled down, “unless we get an investigator in here to dig around, I don’t see any laws broken. Arlo brokered the rent, and you got your money. Unless you think it’s illegal to take it from someone like Escobar, I don’t get it.”

  “Nobody’s showed up in the rental places, Case.”

  “Like I said, you got your money.”

  “But why?’’ Mel passed a hand over his brow, pursed his lips and whistled once, a low note. “Case, the Landing is empty. It’s empty because of the weather, sure, but also because of Arlo, and maybe also Escobar. The summer money we depend on from the stores and stuff isn’t here this year, and people like Kay and Mabel, Howard up at the deli, they’re not doing so well. Pretty awful, in fact.”

  “Okay, but don’t you—”

  “Now Ozzie, he’s doing all right because we all need gas and oil, and Vinia, her drug store isn’t hurting either, for obvious reasons.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s possible that Escobar had Jack killed and Steve burned out, and God help us, did something to Georgia. And I know, I know, I can’t prove it. Any of it.”

  “So what does Arlo say?”

  He stopped himself before he said more. He already knew the answer—he saw it in Todd’s sudden interest in the river, and in Mel’s having the grace to look more than a little uncomfortable. He asked why with a weary gesture.

  “Because you’ll scare the shit out of him,” Todd answered bluntly. “If he pulls that ‘flower power’ crap, all you have to do is make that face and he’ll have to change his drawers.”

  Casey was startled. “What face?”

  “The one you always make just before you blow your stack.”

  He frowned in confusion. “I do?”

  “Hey, it’s not an ugly face,” Mel assured him hastily. “It’s kind of a... I don’t know, like you’ve turned to stone or something.” He nodded. “Scary as hell, believe me.”

  Casey had a feeling he ought to be insulted. Nevertheless, he thought it was stupid idea, and he told them so, and told them again when Micah, perversely, agreed with the idea. It was stupid because Arlo had done nothing wrong that they knew of; stupid because if Arlo denied it, there was nothing they could do about it; and doubly stupid because if they were in fact right—which he honestly doubted—they were risking a lot of trouble with a man named Escobar, who traveled in circles considerably more dangerous than the kind they could find in Maple Landing. Or anywhere near it

  Arlo was a friend to them all to one degree or another. They were taking a big chance confronting him with such accusations.

  “We’re dying, Case,” Mel said simply, hands spread.

  “Nobody cares about a two-bit place like this,” Todd added. “Small people like us, we don’t amount to much in their view.” He gestured to the hill beside him, meaning the outside world. “Hell, it’s hard enough getting people coming here as it is. We get some kind of scam, plot, whatever the hell it is, what chance do we have? And who would give a damn?”

  Casey slipped off the railing and stepped away from the cabin. He refused to look at them, although he could feel their expectation. It wasn’t right. He couldn’t do it. Arlo was a throwback, calculated or not, and he still couldn’t see any crime here at all. He took off his cap, wiped his forehead, and kicked softly at the ground.

  Shook his head slowly, and licked his lips.

  Nope; he couldn’t do it.

  Before he could tell them, however, the sound of a van broke the silence.

  He could see it through the trees, and knew it was going too fast. The driver must have realized it too, because there was a sudden harsh cry of brakes, and as Micah said, “Son of a bitch,” the van skidded down the slope, slewing sideways, straightening, missing a tree by the breadth of a scream, and slammed to a halt with the dock rope drawn taut around its blunted nose.

  “My God,” Mel said breathlessly.

  “Customers, Mike,” was all Todd said.

  Micah pushed off the steps, and was abreast of Casey when he stopped. “Oh ... shit.”

  Casey didn’t see it until Micah nudged him sharply and pointed.

  The bees.

  A spinning cloud too thick to see through, rising like a thunderhead from behind the van.

  Todd eased to his side, Mel right behind him. “Look at them,” he said at last. “They’ve goddamn swarmed.” He leaned forward, squinting. “What in the hell made them do that?”

  Casey’s throat seized as. they moved toward the apron.

  The bees settled over the van, covering it by stages, hundreds of them crawling, dozens more circling, dropping, circling again.

  They didn’t make a sound.

  “The noise,” Casey offered quietly. When Todd frowned, he pointed at the skid marks on the blacktop. “The brakes were damn loud. Maybe that was enough to set them off.”

  They looked to Micah, who only shrugged his ignorance and stopped, tipping his cap back on his head. “This is far as I go, guys, I can tell you.”

  “Well, we can’t just leave them,” the doctor argued, his voice high, nearly squeaking.

  “You want to go over there, shoo them away?” Micah asked. “Be my guest.”

  “But we can’t leave them,” Farber repeated.

  Todd grabbed Micah’s arm. “You got kerosene someplace?”

  Casey shook his head at the idea. “There’s too many. We need smoke or something.” He shook his head again. “Not enough. We’d need to burn the damn forest down.”

  The bees didn’t seem to care. They crawled, hovered, crawled again.

  Without a sound.

  And now the men could hear the muffled screaming inside.

  Todd flapped one hand helplessly. “Aw, man ... Casey, now what
?”

  He took an involuntary step forward. Good question, he thought, feeling a rush of cold pass through his stomach.

  “Damn,” Mel whispered, and walked purposefully toward the dock. Todd stretched out his arm, but Farber swerved around it.

  “Doc, damnit!”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Casey followed without thinking, not daring to yell at Mel to get his ass back here. Todd joined him, jaw working nervously, fingers of his left hand patting his leg. Micah swore, and veered toward the boathouse, gesturing that the others should stay the hell where they were.