A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  He stamped his feet hard as if coming in from the cold. "And where're the freakin’ lights?" he demanded. "I drive all the way up here, you're just sittin’ there playin’ with your…Come on, make me a cup of coffee or something, will you? I mean, what am I now, your freakin’ baby-sitter?"

  Anthony knew this was meant to make him forget the chipmunk embarrassment. But worse was to come as soon as Marky discovered what Anthony had already figured out.

  Marky stopped in mid-tirade, seeing Anthony's face. "What?" he asked scathingly. "What is it now?" He reached past Anthony to snap the wall switch up and down a few times himself.

  Still nothing. But the light dawned inside Marky's head, all right, and then he really went ballistic, pulling the gun from his jacket pocket and waving it as he stomped around cursing and threatening, spit drops flying from his mouth.

  "Guy freakin’ didn't turn the power on!" he bellowed. "Guy freakin’ thinks we're idiots, doesn't even trust us to close the blinds, fer freak's sake!"

  But it was worse than that, Anthony realized. The house had electricity; why else would there be light fixtures in it? But…where did it come from?

  Back in juvie, guys had tried to teach Anthony things, guys who were plumbers, electricians, or carpenters. They took kids out to job sites, showing them how it was to be a working stiff, that maybe it was okay: getting up early and breaking their asses for a few lousy bucks a week. Carrying their lunches and kissing up to bosses; beers after work, maybe, for a treat.

  Big whoop, Anthony had thought back then. He hadn't seen the attraction, and kowtowing to Marky now only reminded him how much he hadn't seen it. But he'd picked up a few facts on his outings with working guys, one of them being that everything in a house either came from somewhere, or went somewhere, or both.

  Water, sewer…power. You could run it in underground, but the driveway was way too long for that. So it was a mystery, but if he didn't want Marky going batshit, Anthony knew he'd better figure it out fast.

  Moving through the house, he kept searching for the answer. There weren't any blinds at the windows; no shades or curtains, either. It wasn't that kind of place, the walls all painted a clean, pale tan like a bleached paper bag, floors polyurethane-shiny and the woodwork white as a polished skeleton. And all the windows faced the water, as Anthony had noticed right off, so no one would see any lights.

  He crossed through a large, sparsely furnished living and dining area—cream-colored sofas covered in nubbly cloth, pale wooden tables and chairs, huge framed art prints—to stand by a wide plate-glass sliding door leading out onto the deck. Through the trees, he could see a flock of birds flying low across the water, all turning at once this way and that as precisely as if the flock were a single well-trained acrobatic troupe.

  Or a single bird. Behind him, Marky ranted and raved some more; Anthony tuned it all out until a thunderclap sent his heart into his throat, the shot from Marky's pistol whizzing past him to punch a small hole in the plate glass with a sharp whap!

  As slowly and gracefully as a waterfall in a slow-motion nature film—they'd run a lot of nature films in the juvie home, those and John Wayne pictures—the window collapsed, cascading a shower of shining, greenish-white bits down onto the deck hanging off the back of the house, and the polished wood floor inside.

  "Freakin’ guy," Marky pronounced, tucking the gun back into his jacket as if he'd accomplished something useful with it. "No lights, no coffee, what the freak we're gonna do, now?"

  Turning to Anthony as if he expected an answer.

  The night before, they'd all had dinner together in the big old house on Key Street: grilled salmon with mustard sauce, wild rice pilaf, and Swiss chard from the garden. Dessert was a pie of wild blueberries picked locally, earlier in summer; in the dining room with candlelight reflecting in the gold-medallion wallpaper, dusk purpling in the wavery-glassed antique windows, and a birch log flickering on the hearth—for in August the Maine evenings already hinted insistently at winter-Jake basked contentedly in the presence of her nearest and dearest.

  But then in the noisy confusion of everyone leaving at once, she'd wished them all gone immediately, if only to get some peace and quiet around here.

  "Don't lose her Raggedy Ann doll," Ellie White entreated at the last minute, gazing around a little wildly. Lee was already upstairs in the child's bed they'd set up for her in Jake's room.

  Ellie's husband, George, waited in the car. "Or forget to pick her up from day care," she added.

  "I won't. Ellie, come on, now, we've talked about this. You know it's going to be fine." Jake would've happily kept the child home with her all day but Ellie wanted the little girl's mornings to go exactly as usual, and Lee, a precocious, outgoing toddler, adored visiting her baby-sitter.

  "I know, I know." Tall, slender, and ridiculously pretty in tailored slacks, a white blouse, and a black cashmere cardigan that she'd plucked out of a sale bin—on her, it looked as if it had been designed for her in Paris—Ellie pushed pale red hair off her forehead uncertainly. "Oh, what am I forgetting?"

  Outside, George touched the car horn lightly. "Go," urged Jake. "It'll be okay, you'll see."

  Ellie hadn't ever been away from her daughter for even one night, and now here she was going off to Italy for a whole week. "I guess," she said doubtfully, glancing around as if she might just stay home after all. But at last with a tearful embrace she fled, and then the rest of them were going, too.

  "See ya," said Sam, easing out before Jake could grab him. With dark, curly hair, a rakish grin like his late father's, and way more physical agility than one human being had any right to possess, he was a man now, his attitude seemed to say, no longer available for random hugs from his mother or anyone else.

  "Bye," she said softly. He'd spent the last few days trying to teach her how to handle a boat, using his own wooden dory out on Passamaquoddy Bay for a classroom. But she'd spent most of the time on the water with him just memorizing his face; if things went well for him in Portland, he'd be away from here all autumn and winter.

  "Where," Bella Diamond demanded fretfully, rooting through her handbag as Sam's car backed noisily out the driveway, "are my spare packets of antiseptic hand wipes?"

  With her henna-purple hair twisted into a knot on her skinny neck and her ropily muscled arms poking from the sleeves of a red silk dress, Jake's housekeeper resembled a rawboned male prison inmate put forcibly through a department-store beauty makeover. Bella was a clean-freak, but she was also the kindest, funniest, hardest-working person Jake knew, and her marriage to Jake's dad just put the cherry on the cake as far as Jake was concerned.

  "Now, now, old girl," the old man groused comfortably to his new wife. "No soap shortage where we're going." He was dressed for the occasion in new jeans and suspenders, a new plaid flannel shirt with the creases still in it, and leather boots.

  Or rather, one boot. The other foot was encased in a plastic cast. He saw Jake looking at it, waved her concern away.

  "Now, if both feet were broken," he began, wrapping an arm around Bella's skinny, silk-clad waist.

  Slipping away from him, Bella ran for the door, her voice as usual the squawk of a rough stick scratched over a violin. "Come on, you old fool, or we'll be left on the dock the way I nearly left you at the altar. And I'm still not sure I shouldn't have."

  But it was in their faces, their happy triumph at having found one another; her dad's, especially. The ruby stud glinted in his earlobe as, taking Bella's hand, he hobbled out.

  Which left only Wade. Tall and solidly built with blond, brush-cut hair, pale eyes that were blue or gray depending on the weather, and a confident grin whose ability to make her heart do flip-flops hadn't lessened in the slightest since the first time she saw it, he wrapped her in a farewell embrace.

  "You going to be okay here without anyone to boss around?" he wanted to know.

  "Don't worry, I can boss you around from any distance."

  He chuckled into her hair. "Gues
s so."

  He was headed out to help stabilize a freighter that had lost propulsion in the channel on its way into the harbor. The radio call had come in about an hour ago; the vessel had dragged one anchor and was in serious danger of dragging the other.

  So it was an emergency. "I'll be fine," she told him as he stepped away from her to shoulder his backpack. "Lee's going to keep me busy. Watch out for the sidewalk hole," she added as he went out and descended the porch steps.

  Through the gathering fog-wisps of evening he'd strode away toward the harbor, whistling as he went. Bath, book, bed; she'd thought contentedly of the solitary evening ahead of her.

  But now only a little over twelve hours later she clutched the phone in one suddenly icy hand. Around her the house stood empty, the phone alcove scented by the boxes of spices she kept there, morning sunlight lying motionless in pale squares on the varnished hardwood floor.

  Couldn't be him, she tried telling herself. But it was; she hadn't heard the voice on the phone in decades, yet its harsh, distinctive rasp was as familiar to her as her own. Anxiously she punched in Sandy O’Neill's New York number and cursed when it connected her to his voice mail.

  "Sandy, listen, Ozzie Campbell just called me. I don't know where from, the number was blocked. But…tell Larry Trotta, and get back in touch with me as soon as you can, will you please?"

  She wondered what else to add. But there wasn't anything. "Thanks, Sandy," she said finally, and hung up.

  In the kitchen she gazed around indecisively, barely seeing the high, bright windows, pine wainscoting, and venerable old soapstone sink, her glance lingering instead on the dogs’ dishes lined up by the stove.

  She should have kept the animals here. The old black Lab, Monday, would be no help against an intruder, but the Doberman would be; Prill was a rescue dog with some very bad history Jake was better off not knowing, but whatever it was made the dog a mailman's worst nightmare.

  Or an intruder's. And even Monday could still bark. But when she tried calling the training center's number she got a message reminding her that hunting-dog refresher training took place on a remote lake way up-country. Ham radio was the only voice access, so unless she got in the car and drove the ninety or so miles to the center to claim them, the dogs were gone for the duration.

  Frustrated, she poured cold coffee, dumped it after a bitter sip, then spied the note she'd written to herself, reminding her to pick Lee up from the baby-sitter's at eleven-thirty.

  It was now ten forty-five. She touched her fingertips to her lips; should she even bring Lee back here at all?

  But then she frowned. "All right. Get hold of yourself," she said aloud. "Call Bob Arnold and let him know what's happened."

  So she did, getting put through first to the dispatcher and then to Bob's voice mail because it wasn't an emergency. Keeping her voice even, she described Ozzie Campbell's call, then phoned the baby-sitter, Helen Nevelson. Her machine picked up:

  "Hi! This is Helen. If I'm not answering, I've probably got my hands full with your kid. So leave your number, call us again later, or come on over and join us…bye!"

  The girl's cheerful voice made Jake feel better, and the day-care place itself, set on a hidden cul-de-sac in Eastport's North End section, would be nearly impossible for Ozzie Campbell or any other stranger to find. Besides, three hours from Bangor and light-years from anywhere else…Eastport was surely too far for even that creep Campbell to come, just because he was in a snit.

  Wasn't it?

  In Jake's old house, the previous owners did repairs with whatever materials they had handy. Wooden windows got fixed up with bathtub caulk, pictures dangled crookedly from hammered-in metal screws, and sticking doors were rejiggered by the simple method of hacking off a rough quarter inch or so at the bottom.

  Thus the neat, well-organized bins, shelves, and racks of Wadsworth's Hardware Store on Water Street had the same effect on her as photos of delicious food might have on a starving person, especially if they were accompanied by scratch-n-sniff cards for turpentine, leather work gloves, and sweeping compound.

  "Morning, Jake. What's the project for today?" Tom Godley poked his graying head from behind a stack of cardboard cartons in the delivery area of the store.

  "Concrete," she replied as the scent of 3-IN-ONE oil joined the other perfumes wafting into her head. "That sidewalk."

  He nodded silently. "I need a couple of bags of sand, one of gravel…" Tom had already begun writing on a yellow pad. "…one of those plastic mixing troughs, but not a trowel, because my dad has one of those—"

  Tom looked up. "If your dad's anything like my dad you don't want to mess with his tools."

  "Right. A mixing trowel, then." She hadn't intended to come to the hardware store at all, but as she was hastily setting up wooden sawhorses to guard against anybody else falling into the sidewalk hole, the baby-sitter had called back.

  And all was well, not one single unusual thing had happened, and anyway, Helen was a capable girl, Jake reminded her self. Lee was having her snack, no strangers had phoned or visited… and the call from Campbell had been distressing, but nothing worse. So Jake had decided to leave well enough alone and pick the child up at the usual time.

  Finished with her order, Tom Godley went back to unloading cardboard cartons: claw hammers, whisk brooms, fuses, saw blades, a nail gun, two coal scuttles, and a box of mothballs were noted against a packing slip, priced with a label gun, and placed on the shelves with the other essential items Wadsworth's carried.

  "We'll send the stuff up on the truck this afternoon, okay?" he said. "Too heavy for you to haul."

  "Yes, thanks." Once dubbed the empty-building capital of the world, Eastport was now full of old-house fix-up folks who liked good architecture and relatively cheap real estate, both of which the town had lots of, so the work truck went out twice a day.

  "Follow the instructions," said Tom. "Don't rush. Build it up in layers like interior plaster. Too thick and it'll crack so don't slop it on all at once. But you know that by now, I guess."

  She did, but Tom could never resist. "Once you get it laid in there, spray it and lay a tarp over it. You cut the concrete out wider at the bottom already?"

  She nodded, but apparently not firmly enough. "It should be like a pyramid, lots wider at the base," he said. "So the shape locks the new material in place."

  He plucked a wide chisel from a shelf. "Masonry tool," he said. "Your dad's probably got one of these, too."

  Over his years of being a fugitive from justice—or in his case, injustice-Jacob Tiptree had become an expert stonemason; it was a job he could travel with, never staying more than a few weeks or months in any one place, and best of all, a stonemason often got paid in cash.

  She let Tom add the chisel to the list. "Keep it all nice and moist, but not wet," he added.

  Pocketing her change, Jake planned to attack the sidewalk hole again later in the day, when Lee was down for a nap. As for Campbell's call, she'd be hearing from Bob Arnold and Sandy O’Neill soon, and now that she'd had the baby-sitter's reassuring report she decided to wait and see what they both thought before getting into any kind of a panic.

  A decent plan…but what Tom said next threw a monkey wrench into it. "Coupla fellas in here asking about you, earlier."

  At the end of the fish pier across the street the red-sailed schooner Sylvina Beal was taking on a party of whale-watchers for a trip out into the Bay of Fundy Hampers full of lunch got handed over the rail, and coolers full of refreshment followed.

  "Really?" She turned in alarm. "Asking what?"

  Through the big plate-glass window behind the cash register, Tom watched the landlubbers make their way gingerly down the steep metal gang toward the Sylvina's foredeck. "Whether or not I knew you, anything about you. The one guy had a snapshot of you."

  She swallowed hard. "Who were they? And what'd you say?"

  "Told ‘em what I always do," said Tom, "when someone I don't know comes snoopin’ aroun
d asking questions about somebody I do."

  He mimed zipping his lip. "Young fellas. Sam's friends, at first I thought. But they didn't mention him."

  "What'd they look like?" Campbell was in his early sixties.

  He shrugged. "Twentyish, in T-shirts and jeans. Didn't pay ‘em a lot of attention at first. City boys. Gold chains and some fancy wristwatch one of ‘em had on. I do remember that."

  It was still just barely possible that this was nothing. "Thanks, Tom. I appreciate your not telling them where to find me. I like a heads-up before I get company, you know?"

  Tom nodded, turning his attention to a woman buying a lot of paint scrapers and sandpaper as Jake rushed out.

  On the street, crowds of tourists lent a holiday atmosphere to the brilliant day. Folks dressed in new-looking L.L. Bean gear peered into shop windows; cars bearing out-of-state plates eased slowly along, searching for parking spots, and kids wearing tiny baseball caps skipped back and forth atop the granite break water.

  "Excuse me, but do you know where I can find a restaurant that serves—?"

  Lobster, the pleasant lady in the white straw hat was going to finish; tourists here always did. And the answer this late in the season was nowhere; August was molting season for the clawed delicacies, their shells thin as paper now and the meat beneath unappetizing. But Jake didn't give it.

  "I'm sorry, I'm in a hurry," she interrupted, getting into her car; the nice lady looked affronted. So much for that famous down-east Maine hospitality.

  Jake didn't care, and was about to punctuate her rudeness with a squeal of tires as she backed out of her parking spot. But instead Billie Whitson's silver MG pulled up fast behind her and stopped, blocking her exit.

  "Hoo-hoo!" Billie called, getting out and hurrying to Jake's driver's side window. "I mean it, Jake," she said, hooking her long, red nails atop the partly open car window as if she could claw her way in.

  "I'm showing properties nonstop," she added impatiently, "and I know you think you don't want to sell. But what if you got a great offer?"