Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  She conceded that Messinger had shown more resourcefulness than his competitors. He’d phoned her last night, so his appearance at her house this morning, while unwelcome, wasn’t exactly unexpected. And unlike the others, he would go national with the story. If she gave him his exclusive, the entire country could learn what was inside her box.

  The laughter she’d been stifling bubbled up and out of her. She wished Jed were here so they could laugh together. No, she shouldn’t be wishing that.

  “I’ll think about it,” she promised Derrick Messinger, giving his hair one more furtive look. It sure was thick. Probably real, but suspiciously thick.

  By the time she’d backed out to the street and pointed her Subaru in the direction of the school, she was no longer thinking about Messinger’s hair. She was thinking about Jed Willetz’s hair, and his silver-gray eyes, and his amazing mouth. She really didn’t want to be thinking about him, but she couldn’t help herself.

  WALKING OUT of the old shingled house where Sewell McCormick had his office, Jed sensed that something was out of whack.

  The day had stayed overcast, fat gray clouds trudging across the sky, but down below, on Main Street, windows glistened as if they were reflecting a diamond-bright sun. Jed ordinarily didn’t pay much attention to the cleanliness of windows, but this was noticeable.

  Sewell had mastered multitasking long before anyone had coined the term. He was the Rockwell town manager—which was different from the mayor in that he wasn’t elected and he did all the work—as well as a podiatrist and also the overseer of the town cemetery. Jed’s feet were fine, and he couldn’t care less how Rockwell was managed, but he did need to make arrangements to bury his grandfather’s remains.

  “He was a fine man, your grandfather,” Sewell had said with practiced solemnity, patting his white medical coat in the vicinity of his heart. He’d occupied his swivel stool, leaving Jed no choice but to sit on the special podiatrist examining table, a cross between a dentist’s chair and a sectional couch, covered with a strip of sterile white paper. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem like an appropriate place to discuss John Willetz’s ashes.

  “He was a son of a bitch,” Jed argued mildly, “but other than that, yeah, he was a good guy.”

  “This town is poorer in his absence.”

  It wouldn’t be poorer once Jed paid the damn property tax on his grandfather’s land. He supposed that overdue tax bill would have been even greater if his grandfather hadn’t sold off a chunk of his estate to Erica Leitner.

  Whom Jed was not going to think about anymore today.

  “Maybe you never knew this about him,” Sewell confided, leaning toward Jed and staring through his horn-rimmed eyeglasses, “but he had a real stubborn toenail fungus in ’99. I attacked that beast with every weapon in my arsenal. Got to the point where he looked like he had cauliflower growing out of the cuticle.”

  This was more than Jed needed to know. “I want to lay his ashes to rest, Sewell. Just tell me when I can get that done.”

  “Will you be having a ceremony? Have you talked to Reverend Pith about it?”

  Jed hadn’t talked to Reverend Pith because he hadn’t decided yet whether to have a ceremony. Whom would he invite? His father? The Widow Keefer? Or would it be like the memorial service they’d had in church right after his grandfather died, when just about everyone in town had crammed into the church? Not because they all loved John Willetz so much, but because nothing else had been going on that day. January in Rockwell was pretty slow.

  April in Rockwell was pretty slow, too. Every month in Rockwell was slow. Maybe a graveside ceremony would give folks some desperately needed entertainment—Jed’s gift to his hometown.

  But as he gazed down Main Street, he wondered if April already had something going on. At least one thing had happened here: a massive downtown window washing.

  It was more than windows. The obligatory American flags were out, hanging limply in the damp midday air, but some stores had put decorative flags on display, too. Dangling from a pole beside the door of Harriet Ettman’s crafts shop was a bright-blue pennant featuring a nauseatingly cute bunny. The Eat-zeria’s door was flanked by two flags, one depicting a bottle of soda and the other two sunny-side-up eggs frying in a pan that reminded Jed of the skillet his father had stolen from his grandfather’s kitchen. Potter Henley’s accounting office, on the second floor above the Moosehead, flew a flag in the shape of a large dollar sign. Hackett’s Superette had red-white-and-blue bunting draped festively above its door.

  Last time Jed looked, it wasn’t a national holiday.

  While he was watching, Harriet emerged from her shop lugging a bulky planter filled with pansies. She set it on the sidewalk just beyond her door, where people would be sure to trip over it as they walked by, and then dusted off her hands and vanished back into her store.

  Flowers? Flags and flowers? Was the president planning a photo op in town?

  No, but the media were here. Word must have gotten out about those TV people who’d been tramping all over Erica’s lawn that morning.

  Of course word had gotten out. There were no secrets in Rockwell, other than his grandfather’s possible relationship with Reena Keefer. Rockwell was sprucing up because TV reporters were in town.

  Ambling down the street toward his turquoise rental car, Jed checked out the glistening windows, the flags and Harriet’s pansies. She emerged from her store again, carrying a watering can, and gave her flowers a good soaking. She looked a little spiffier than usual, her silver hair tidy, her cardigan tied by its sleeves around her shoulders and hanging down her back like a cape, her sneakers so white she must have used shoe polish on them.

  Gee, maybe he should hold a ceremony for his grandfather today so the media could report on it. Surely the death and burial of John Willetz, an authentically crotchety New England Yankee, was at least as worthy of coverage as Erica’s box.

  His car was parked in front of the Superette, and he ducked inside to pick up some more chewing gum. What he needed was the nicotine gum, but that struck him as the equivalent of methadone; he saw no point in exchanging an addiction to cigarettes for an addiction to nicotine gum. Plain old peppermint ought to be enough for him.

  Pop Hackett was hunkered down in front of the checkout counter, tidying the candy racks. “Hey,” Jed greeted him.

  Pop glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, Jed. You live in New York City—tell me, you think I’ve got too many rows of M&M’s?” He had four rows—brown packages, yellow packages, blue, red. “I’m just thinking you’d be a little more savvy about style and such, that’s all.”

  “M&M’s are M&M’s,” Jed said. “They look the same in New York as they do here.”

  That seemed to please Pop. He straightened up, dusted the cuffs of his plaid flannel shirt and smiled. Forty years ago, orthodontia would have done him a world of good.

  Jed hoped he wasn’t destroying the aesthetic balance of the candy display by grabbing a pack of chewing gum. “Where is everybody?” he asked. The store was empty except for Pop.

  “Running their own stores and dreaming of fame,” Pop told him, sweeping a hand over the sparse strands of hair stuck to his scalp like dried brown seaweed. “Haven’t you heard about the TV people?”

  “Yeah.” He tried to think of any other food items he might need. His stock of peanut butter, milk and bananas was holding up, and while he’d been inventorying the house’s contents yesterday he’d stumbled upon a dozen cans of soup, another five of stew and three of canned pears on a shelf in the basement. No canned peaches—and he wouldn’t be able to buy any fresh peaches, either, not for another couple of months.

  Thinking of peaches made him think of other things. He wandered toward the back of the store, where Pop kept a small and rather pitiful selection of alcoholic beverages. His wines were mostly Château du Jug and Vintage Screw Top, but Jed needed to have a bottle on hand. He searched the shelves in vain for a halfway decent Chianti. That was wh
at Erica had served last night. It had been good; she obviously hadn’t bought it at the Superette.

  He settled on a Merlot he knew would be mediocre, but mediocre was better than bad. Maybe he’d bring it over to Erica’s tonight, and they could split it—once she’d gotten rid of the paparazzi. They could drink some wine, and he could experience something just as delicious as fresh peaches, even though peaches were out of season.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DERRICK TOOK A NIP of scotch, winced because it wasn’t Chivas and tucked the bottle under the back seat of Mookie’s car. Ordinarily, he didn’t indulge before the day’s work was done, but he’d been up since five-thirty, so in a sense he’d already put in eight hours. He deserved a pick-me-up.

  Actually, other than the unavailability of Chivas in this puny burg, things were looking not too bad. His contact with Erica Leitner that morning had been brief, but he believed he’d connected with her. He always did, sooner or later, especially with women. He could fine-tune the ratio of earnestness to humor in his approach, and he’d been blessed with a rugged and unarguably telegenic handsomeness that had, if anything, been made even more appealing by the plastic surgeon who’d rebuilt his nose. Women like Erica nearly always succumbed.

  He’d get his exclusive; he was sure.

  But until she was ready to talk to him—and let him film her damn box—he was stuck in Rockwell with time to burn. Sonya had the swell idea of turning the show into a quasidocumentary about small-town New England life. “I’m telling you,” she cawed, “the viewers’ll eat it up. Crusty Yankees, cute little stores and all those mountains in the background. Mookie, film the mountains, wouldja?”

  Mookie obediently swung his camera in the direction of the hills. They weren’t mountains. Derrick ought to know. He’d climbed mountains in his pursuit of stories. He’d once climbed all the way to the top of Massachusetts’s Mount Everett as part of an interview with a guy who claimed to have killed his commanding officer in Vietnam thirty-something years ago. The guy liked to get away from it all by climbing mountains whenever the memories of that ugly day in ‘Nam threatened to overtake him. He’d climbed a few mountains out West, in the Cascades and the Rockies, but fortunately Derrick had caught up with him on Everett rather than Mount Hood. Derrick had later discovered that if he mumbled—a skill that didn’t come naturally to him, given his well-honed broadcast elocution—he could trick people into thinking he’d climbed Mount Everest rather than Mount Everett.

  The guy he’d interviewed during that trek had turned out to be a dogfaced liar, too. Derrick had located his sergeant—the officer he’d supposedly killed—running a Jiffy-Lube in Cincinnati.

  The point was, though, Derrick knew mountains. Those humps on the horizon were not mountains.

  “You happy with this?” Sonya thrust a clipboard in front of him. He leaned against the car and skimmed the text she’d written. He was a journalist, a hard-hitting reporter who whistled like a missile when he was going after someone. But to stand on a corner of Rockwell’s picturesque little Main Street and deliver a monologue about small-town values and the treasures that might be hidden within the most sleepy, inconsequential community, well, that wasn’t his strength. For a task like that, he needed Sonya to put words in his mouth.

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” he said, handing the clipboard back to her. She’d printed clearly, block letters in black ink on white paper, so he’d be able to read the text from a distance without squinting. Squinting was fine when you wanted to look indignant or determined, but this was a happy story. A fun story. Totally not up his alley.

  “I’m thinking, we’ll have you stand in front of that crafts store for the first part. I like the flowers. That’s such a nice touch. I wish we had some sunlight. Mookie, can you make it look sunnier in the film?”

  “Sure.” Mookie was too goddamn agreeable. Derrick wouldn’t mind—he liked when Mookie was agreeing with him—but Mookie’s good-natured acquiescence meant that Derrick always seemed much grouchier by comparison.

  “What kind of flowers are those, anyway?” Derrick asked, peering down at the wilting little blossoms. They were yellow and purple—odd colors.

  “Pansies,” Mookie said.

  Derrick straightened up and backed away from the planter. “I don’t want to get filmed with any pansies.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Derrick,” Sonya scolded. “They’re very nice flowers. They make the setting look springlike.”

  “I don’t want to look springlike. Not with pansies.” Why couldn’t he stand in front of an evergreen somewhere? A sturdy Douglas fir. Or an oak. Were oak trees evergreens? He didn’t know much about plant life, but he knew he didn’t want to be associated with pansies in front of a TV audience of millions.

  “Just stand there.” Sonya nudged him back into place next to the planter. Derrick felt a muscle tick in his thigh, a flurry of light spasms, his body’s protest against this juxtaposition. A movement to his left caught his peripheral vision, and when he turned toward the crafts shop he saw a couple of women inside, spying on him. They grinned like baboons when he stared at them. Which one of them was responsible for the pansies? Whoever it was, he hoped she’d get stricken by a bolt of fabric.

  “Mookie, you set?” Sonya asked.

  “Yeah. I got lots of mountains.”

  Hills, Derrick thought churlishly. Those were not mountains.

  Mookie switched on a rectangular light attached to his camera. “Is that gonna look like sunshine?” Sonya asked.

  “Close enough.”

  “Okay, then, let’s boogie.” She smoothed a few strands of Derrick’s hair, blotted the surface of his nose with a tissue, then backed up to stand beside Mookie. She held up the clipboard. “Go,” she cued him.

  “‘I’m standing on Main Street in Rockwell, New Hampshire,’” Derrick read from Sonya’s script. He heard tension in his voice. The flowers were emitting invisible vibes. He felt them radiating up his spine and tightening his throat. “‘When we speak of the heart of New England, we’re speaking about places like Rockwell, where the stores are small and the neighbors are friendly.’” Right, like those two friendly apes gawking at him through the shop window. “‘No big chain stores here—’” Wal-Mart wouldn’t waste its time, he thought “‘—but instead a slow, cozy rhythm, the way life ought to be lived.’” What the hell was that supposed to mean, anyway? A cozy rhythm? Was Sonya turning into a freaking poet on him?

  She flipped the page and he continued to read her text. “‘Small towns have their histories and their mysteries.’” Great—now she was crafting rhymes. “‘The history of Rockwell revolves around some early-Colonial farmers and trappers and a granite quarry. Its most recent mystery revolves around an ancient box that a schoolteacher…’” Sonya had inserted a few words above the line, and he struggled to make them out. “‘And her former student…’” Back to the big black print: “Dug up in her backyard.”

  “Okay, okay.” Sonya cut him off. “That was fine, but jeez. Do you mind?”

  He realized she was addressing someone behind him. Spinning around, he saw a skinny, bedraggled fellow with bulging eyes and scraggly hair that appeared not to have been shampooed since sometime during the Clinton administration. The clown was mugging and waving, mouthing Hi, Mom at the camera.

  “We’re trying to film something here,” Sonya scolded him.

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m wavin’,” he explained. “Tryin’ to get in your film.”

  The man smelled a little ripe. Derrick stepped back from him and banged his leg into the pansy planter. Flinching, he sidled in the opposite direction, toward the store’s window. Chivalry might demand that he protect Sonya from this jerk, who was obviously a derelict and quite possibly demented.

  Apparently undaunted, she stormed over to the guy and wagged her clipboard in his face. “Look at my notes,” she demanded, although she never held the clipboard still enough for him to read them. “Do you see anything in here about having someone standing behi
nd Derrick and waving and saying, ‘Hi, Mom’? Do you see anything even remotely like that in the script?”

  “I wasn’t saying ‘Hi, Mom,’” the guy defended himself. “I was just mouthing it. So’s only someone who can read lips would know what I was saying.”

  “But you’re not in this script, are you?”

  The guy tried to follow the fluttering clipboard with his eyes. “Hey, you wanna film in Rockwell? Well, I live in Rockwell, eh? This is my town.”

  Sonya regarded him. “What’s your name?” she finally asked.

  “Toad Regan. What’s yers?”

  Toad Regan. Honest to God. If they were about a thousand miles south of here, Derrick would be expecting to hear the “Dueling Banjos” theme right about now.

  Sonya signaled Mookie to resume taping. “So, why don’t you tell us a little about your town?” she asked Toad.

  Was she actually going to include this rancid morsel of humanity in the show? Derrick scowled, then forced his forehead to relax so he wouldn’t deepen his facial creases. He took a steadying breath and watched Sonya go at it, reminding himself that she’d dragged him out of the ratings abyss and that she knew what she was doing.

  “My town?” Toad stood a little straighter and quit mugging. He eyed the funneled lens of Mookie’s camera and his smile faded. “Well, it’s just a town, y’know? Not too much happens here. You got yer occasional car wreck, yer occasional death, but other’n that, not much. Sometimes a car’ll hit a deer. That’s something, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Sonya agreed, straight-faced. “We’re here in town because of a box someone dug out of her garden. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Oh, sure, the box. Everybody knows about the box.”

  The door to the crafts shop abruptly swung open, and the two apes emerged. Derrick amended his first impression of them; they looked nothing like a lower orders of primates. Rather, they resembled the sort of women who got orgasms from admiring autumn leaves. One was tall and thin, with silver hair, dressed in exceedingly sensible attire and fringed leather loafers. The other was shorter and rounder, and she carried a quilted bag from which protruded a pair of thick knitting needles.