Face on the Wall

by Jane Langton

  “That’s crazy,” said Homer. “You could get him in real trouble. Did you have an invoice, a bill or something with his name on it?”

  “Hell no, he said verbal agreement, okay? I don’t even know his name.”

  Homer thought about it. “So you want me to find him, is that it?”

  “Right, like you’re free of charge, right?”

  Homer sighed. “That’s right. What towing company was it?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know. Big wrecker.”

  “What did he look like, this guy?”

  “Medium height, sweat suit, Bruins cap.”

  “My God, Hank, it could be anybody.” Homer rubbed his chin. “What make was the car, what year?”

  “Chevy Cutlass. Lousy old green four-door. Early eighties. Tires really bald. I told him, I said, nobody oughta drive that heap. Oughta be in a junkyard.”

  “Junkyard, there’s an idea. I could find out if it turned up at Boozer Brown’s place.”

  “Boozer Brown? Oh, yeah, I heard of Boozer Brown. Biggest junkyard in Massachusetts, right?”

  The good thing about Boozer, reflected Homer, driving out Route 9, was the personal interest he took in every old hulk that appeared on his lot. He was like an antiquarian bookseller, cherishing every ancient volume on his shelves. Maybe it was this loving attention that had made him so successful.

  “My God, Boozer,” said Homer, surveying the vast acreage of Boozer’s territory, spreading in all directions, littered with wrecks, “you’ve expanded. When we first met, out there on Nantucket, you had just four or five old cars. And a couple years ago, when I was here, it wasn’t anything like this. Look at you now. You must be visible from the moon, like the Great Wall of China. Congratulations.”

  Boozer smiled proudly. “Thash right. More people driving too fasht, crazhy kidzh, nutsh onna highway, I get what’sh left. You should jusht shee the way they pour in here, day after day. Blood! Shome of ‘em, shoaked in blood. Shometimes an arm or a leg.”

  Homer was used to Boozer’s apocalyptic pronouncements, but he flinched anyway. “Listen, Boozer, what I’m looking for this time is a green Chevy Cutlass, early eighties, four-door sedan.”

  Boozer’s ruined face lighted up. “Oh, sure, I got a coupla thozhe. Wants shee I put ‘em shide by shide. Like I file my shtock in categoriezh, short of. You oughta shee my Lamborghini collection. Shix or sheven Lamborghinizh, shtupid driverzh think they oughta go like hell.”

  Sin and its punishment, thought Homer, as they walked companionably through Boozer Brown’s emporium. Where else was it displayed so simply? There should be a sign over the entrance to Boozer’s junkyard, “Quod Erat Demonstrandum.” Theologians should bring their congregations here on Sunday morning, philosophers should trot their students up and down the aisles between shattered Lamborghinis and crushed Mitsubishis, opening a door now and then, holding up an arm or a leg.

  “Here we are,” said Boozer proudly, stopping beside a pair of Cutlasses. One was crumpled into a frightful crescent of twisted metal, the other was a sad-looking heap with a missing door. Homer reached in and tested the hand brake. It wobbled in his hand.

  “Shperfectly okay,” said Boozer. “Jusha lil problem with the brakes. Needzha new door. You want it? Fifty bucksh, she’zh yourzh.”

  “Oh, no thank you, Boozer. Tell me, how do these—uh—automobiles get here? Wreckers bring them? Company’s got a contract or something?”

  “Right.” Boozer pulled an old-fashioned hip flask from his pocket, took a swig, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Thish one, wrecker come from Waltham. Waltham Towing. I know the guy. He prolly collected it from shome garage, getzh a bunch of ’em, bringzh ’em all at onczh on a trailer. You know.”

  “Good, Boozer. That’s great. I’ll try Waltham Towing, see if I can track down who it belonged to.” Homer glanced again at the car. “I don’t suppose—”

  “Regishtration? Take a look.” Obligingly Boozer opened the car door, flipped open the glove compartment, pawed inside it, and brought out an envelope. “Thish izh your lucky day.”

  “Great.” Homer reached for it, congratulating himself for so easily solving Hank’s grievance. Whoever the bastard was, he’d have to pay up, and then—very possibly—he’d be in much worse trouble. Grinning, Homer slipped out the registration and read the name of the owner of the battered green Chevy Cutlass.

  It was Robert Gast.

  Chapter 53

  … I passed the night and awoke possessing not a piece of silver nor one of gold, and I said within myself, This is the work of the Devil!

  The Thousand and One Nights

  Cindy Foxweiler’s swim cap was yellow, her pink feet lashed the water. Charlene threw all her strength into her strong arms and hurled her body forward, but she couldn’t swim fast enough, she couldn’t catch Cindy. At the edge of the pool Cindy’s yellow cap bobbed up, glistening in the light, and Cindy’s coach bent down to her, laughing, and Cindy tore off her goggles, her grin wide and triumphant, her teeth dazzling in her freckled face.

  Charlene couldn’t believe it. She heard the wild applause and looked up at the cheering people in the bleachers, then ducked her head under the water. In all the other lanes kids were climbing out, pulling off their goggles and caps. Charlene lay still.

  In the end her coach had to jump in and pull her out. “Charlene,” he said anxiously, wrapping a towel around her shoulders and holding her upright, “are you okay?”

  Charlene said nothing. The water streaming down her face was only partly the chlorinated water of the pool. The rest was tears. She had lost the Junior Olympics.

  “I saw it,” said Annie in triumph. “I saw that car plunge down the hill. Flimnap was out there in the vegetable garden, and he raced across and jumped in the car and tried to turn it sideways because it was heading for those big oak trees down there. Eddy would have been killed.”

  Homer and Mary were sitting with Annie in the shade of one of the giddy awnings that had been rigged up by Henry Coombs, a set of old bedspreads swaying on poles. The poles creaked, the bedspreads billowed out like sails, giving Annie’s ruined house a festive air. Before them lay the mounded wreckage of her south windows and bookcases, her shattered bedroom and ruined bath. Some tasteful person had removed the toilet, or shoved it behind a bush.

  Behind them as they sat under the awning, Annie’s wall was still bright and perfect, although it was more endangered than a whooping crane or a shrinking population of whales. Her figures gazed out serenely from their fanciful gallery, as if their future were assured. Annie had washed the wall with soap and water. The colors sparkled, the painted columns shone.

  Hunched over cups of coffee, they ignored the wall and talked about the car that Homer had found at Boozer Brown’s.

  “I thought it was strange,” said Annie. “I hadn’t seen that car since the day they came here to look at the house. Pretending to be so poor.” Angrily she turned to Mary. “Such a sweet impoverished young family. I fell for it and knocked the rent way down. Then, when they moved in, there was no more old Chevy, just a couple of sporty new cars.”

  Mary nodded wisely. “But the Chevy turned up again when they wanted to get rid of Eddy, is that it?”

  “That’s right. There it was again. Flimnap saw it parked at the top of the hill, sort of poised on the edge with the driver’s door open.”

  “I’ll bet Eddy’s weight was all it took to start it rolling,” grumbled Homer. “They left the door open to entice him inside.”

  “‘Come into my parlor,’” said Annie angrily. “It’s what they accuse me of doing, luring him into my house, leaving the door unlocked. Only it must have been Bob Gast who unlocked my door with his key, the one he copied at the hardware store! And listen, what about the time Eddy was almost run over on Route 2? They used to let him run loose all the time! And whenever he came to my house they never looked for him. As far as they knew, he might be lost in the woods. I suppose they hoped he’d end up on Route 2 again and b
e run over for real this time.”

  “And the sledgehammer,” said Homer, his voice heavy with indignation. “Don’t forget the sledgehammer. Gast bought a nice new sledgehammer at the hardware store. In case the kid didn’t die when he fell off the scaffolding, the sledgehammer would finish him off.”

  Annie gasped. Mary shuddered. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Homer.”

  “And then,” Homer went on cheerfully, “he washed off the sledgehammer so no little bits of bloody scalp would be stuck in a crack anywhere, and then he washed his hands and scrubbed his fingernails, scrubba-dubba-dub.” Homer demonstrated with an imaginary brush. “And then, when everything was all clean and tidy, he called the police, full of righteous indignation and fatherly grief.”

  “What about an autopsy?” demanded Annie. “Wouldn’t an autopsy show what really happened?”

  “A fractured skull, that’s all, perfectly consistent with the impact of the kid’s head on the tile floor. And of course it would be perfectly consistent with a sledgehammer blow too, only Gast must have been careful to strike in the same place.”

  “Oh, I hate him,” groaned Mary.

  Annie gripped Homer’s arm. “It all adds up. The Chevy, the key, the sledgehammer. We’ve got him, Uncle Homer.”

  Homer shook his head gloomily. “No, we haven’t.”

  “Oh, Homer,” said Mary, “surely it’s enough.”

  “No, it’s not. Ron at the hardware store, he can’t remember what tools Gast bought that day. The sledgehammer still has a price tag on it, but it might be three or four years old. Even if it’s brand-new, there’s no way of proving it was used to murder Eddy. And as for the keys, there’s no law against copying somebody else’s keys.”

  “But what about the failing brakes?” cried Annie. “Uncle Homer, he hired that guy in prison to make the brakes fail.”

  “You mean you’d take the word of a convicted felon over that of an upstanding citizen like Gast? There was no contract, no writing on a piece of paper. Gast can claim he never met the guy. He never paid him, there was no written agreement to do anything.” Homer looked at Annie dolefully. “So you see, it’s no good. It’s just not good enough.”

  They stared at each other and fell silent. Then Mary looked at her watch and jumped up. “It’s quarter to ten. I should be in school. Thank God, there are only a few more days.”

  There was a loud knocking at Annie’s front door. “Hey, you guys, let me in!” It was Perry Chestnut, coming to take Homer’s place. Homer got up and opened the door, then slipped past Perry and hurried across the driveway to his car. Tim Foley, the good-looking young photographer from the Globe, took his picture.

  Behind Tim a dumpy middle-aged camerawoman let the opportunity go by. Bertha Rugg remembered what her boss had said, Come back with a picture of Anna Swann, and she intended to do just that.

  Dirk Sprocket’s bill was in the mail. Bob Gast looked at it in horror. “But you’re part of the firm,” he said to Roberta. “I thought it was sort of like a family, you helped each other out.”

  “We do. That sum, it’s nothing. It would normally be three times that.” Then Roberta burst out at him, “You said we were doing so well. When your mother died you said—what was it you said?—we’re sitting pretty, that’s what you said.”

  Gast’s toupee had slipped over his forehead. Wrathfully he thrust it back. “Well, we’re not. Not anymore. My God, with all those fucking wrecking companies and Charlene’s goddamned private school and, look here, just look at this little reminder from her swimming coach! Goddamnit, Roberta, we can’t afford an indoor swimming pool.”

  “How are you going to tell her that? The poor kid has just lost the Junior Olympics.”

  “Well, it’s too bad. It’s not my fault, is it? I’ve done my best, my goddamned best.” Gast was nearly in tears. “She’ll just have to take it. There isn’t going to be any indoor pool.”

  At this there was a scream behind his back. It was Charlene, coming into the room. “Daddy! You said! You promised!”

  He whirled around and faced her, his daughter, his enemy. “We can’t do it, Charlene. There’ll be no indoor swimming pool. It’s impossible, it’s absolutely impossible. Face facts. Have a little pity.”

  Charlene had no pity. She stared at him, another scream bursting in her throat as the vision faded, the blue-green water, the track lighting, the deck chairs, the tropical plants. Stiffly she turned and walked away, betrayed by her own father.

  Chapter 54

  Who’ll be chief mourner?

  I, said the Dove,

  I mourn for my love,

  I’ll be chief mourner.

  Mother Goose rhyme

  Sergeant Bill Kennebunk was on the phone again.

  “Oh, hi, Bill,” said Homer. “What’s new?”

  “That forensic botanist, he finally made his report.”

  “Oh, of course. I forgot about the forensic botanist. What did he say?”

  “Those leaf fragments, some of them are Ajuga canadensis. It’s a member of the mint family, a kind of low-growing ground cover.”

  “Well, okay. Small’s coat was covered with burdock burrs and Ajuga canadensis. So what?”

  “It’s very interesting, that’s what. Ajuga canadensis is very rare in Massachusetts. I happen to know that it grows in only one place in Norfolk County. Last year I wrote it up for the local paper.”

  “I see.” Homer gripped the telephone eagerly. “So you know where that fleecy coat of Small’s picked up all those leaves? Are you sure he wasn’t a wildflower enthusiast, just like you?”

  “I doubt it very much. So how’d you like to join me? It’s one of the last remaining patches of woods around here. It’s not in Southtown, it’s next door in Northtown, on Route 109.”

  “How about this afternoon My class in Cambridge is over at two.”

  “I’ll meet you at three. There’s a Mobil station on 109 about a mile beyond Westwood. It’s right across from the woods. Three o’clock,” okay?”

  The trees on the edge of the woods in Northtown were lopped to make room for tiers of telephone wires. Homer parked on the shoulder of the road behind Kennebunk’s elderly Volvo, and together they walked through the mangled trees.

  Deeper into the woods the trees had been left alone. Birches bent this way and that. There were yellow growing tips on the lacy branches of the hemlocks. Below the trees the undergrowth was thick with ferns. “Look,” murmured Kennebunk, “princess pine.”

  They walked on, and Kennebunk pointed out the miniature creeping plant he called Ajuga canadettsis. Homer bent down to look at its microscopic flowers. Then Sergeant Kennebunk beckoned, and they went farther into the woods, following no path, climbing over fallen tree trunks, wading through densely interlaced dead branches. At last Bill Kennebunk stopped and said softly, “Here we are,” and Homer muttered, “Oh, my God.”

  If it had not been strewn with fresh flowers, they would have missed it. The grave was only a slight rise in the ground, littered with fallen twigs and a rotting stump that had been dragged over the ground to cover it.

  “Who brought the flowers?” whispered Homer.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll bet it wasn’t Small.”

  “The lover?” said Homer. He watched as Sergeant Kennebunk reached down and gathered up a handful of wildflowers—yarrow and chicory, daisies and clover. “Look,” he said, “they’re fresh. They must have been picked very recently.” He glanced at Homer, and together they stared around into the surrounding trees. “Come on,” said Kennebunk. “Let’s take a look.”

  They moved in a circle, exploring the nearby woods, finding only scatterings of dead wildflowers. Someone had been bringing them to the grave, gathering up the old flowers and tossing them away.

  At last they gave up and walked back to the road, where Kennebunk reached into the back of his car and brought out a couple of shovels. Together they returned to the grave and cleared it of fallen branches and the rotten stump. Meticulously, for
no reason he could think of, Homer picked up all the flowers and set them aside. Then, solemnly, resolutely, they began to dig.

  It wasn’t hard. The original burial must have been much more difficult—Homer pictured Frederick Small sweating, cursing at the root-packed dirt. Before long they had shoveled out a heap of sandy soil, leaving a steep-sided hole bristling with the torn ends of roots. Only two feet down they put aside their shovels and Homer said, “Oh, Christ.”

  In the dry cavity, spreading out from the mound of dirt still covering the body, was an aureole of golden hair.

  “That goddamned bastard,” said Kennebunk. He looked up at Homer. “You know, McNutt isn’t going to like this. He’ll think of some excuse to hush it up.”

  “Why don’t you put it in the paper first?” suggested Homer brightly. “I mean, before you tell him?”

  “He won’t like that either, but what the hell?”

  Bob Gast too said, What the hell? Bob had a new number for Fred Small, but he was so blinded with rage, he misdialed it again and again. When he got through at last, Small merely whispered his hello.

  Bob roared at him. “What the hell’s going on? What the hell, what the hell?”

  Mary Kelly did not swear when Homer told her what he and Sergeant Kennebunk had found in the Northtown woods, she wept. When she stopped weeping, she said, “Oh, Homer, what happens now? What will they do with her now?”

  “Well, there’ll have to be an autopsy,” said Homer uncomfortably, wincing at the memory of the pathetic remains he had seen in Pearl’s grave. “Fortunately, we found her in Northtown, not Southtown, so Kennebunk doesn’t have to deal with Chief McNutt. The chief officer in Northtown was reasonable enough. He’s starting a serious search for Small, spreading a wide net, bringing in people from all over. He seems to know what he’s doing.”