“But Mrs. Smith,” Dez said uncertainly. “Stan drowned.”
“Stanley was a careful man,” she said, with a sudden, flinty look. “He’d never have gone close to the water like that, certainly not wearing his good suit and fedora. And his foot is broken, wrenched and all scraped-up.”
“He must have fallen,” Dez said, and saying this aloud confirmed what had to be true: however Stan died, his death was an accident.
“That’s what they say and I don’t believe it. All due respect, but I went up where his car was parked and it’s all flat shoreline, grass and dirt. He was in this skinny little brook off the main river. No big rocks to clamber over.” Her voice cracked for the first time and she slapped her hand to her forehead to stop her eyes brimming. “Now, a man doesn’t just trip and fall into the water like that!”
“What are you saying?”
“There’s something more here than meets the eye.”
“Oh, Mrs. Smith, there’s not a chance—”
“Now hear me out. I think someone hurt Stanley. A lady lives up on the common told me she saw a boy throw mud at his car.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand in a fierce motion. “His very first day. Boys learn who to hate from their fathers, I know this, and I was wondering when you talked to him, if he mentioned getting any trouble, what with the resentment against the water board.”
“I did meet Stan right after the mud-throwing incident.”
Mrs. Smith leaned forward, as if she would glean extra insight from listening hard.
“That was the day I did the sketch.”
“He was real proud of it. You did him proud.”
“He came into the drugstore right after the incident, but it was his first day in town. He had no idea who had thrown the mud, just that it was a boy, and I don’t think it would ever occur to anyone that a boy’s prank would mean anything.”
And here was Asa, thankfully. Dez jumped up to introduce him; she explained the portrait connection. Asa offered condolences, but looked mystified as to why Mrs. Smith was at their house.
“Mrs. Smith thinks that something untoward might have happened to Stanley and she thought I might have an idea about anyone who would have wanted to hurt him.”
“There’s not a soul in Cascade who would hurt an innocent person,” he said, and Dez chimed in, “Of course not.”
“I know Stan didn’t just fall into the river.”
Asa looked at Dez and she looked at him and they both looked grateful when the phone began to ring, but Asa got to it first; he turned away to murmur into it. When he hung up, he apologized to Mrs. Smith and took Dez aside. “All hell’s broken loose down there. The grill’s down and a fuse blew and Mrs. Raymond has to leave at noon. I’ll need you to help with lunch.”
He slipped into his pharmacist’s coat, and shook Mrs. Smith’s hand. Again, he said how sorry he was. Again, he said no one would have intentionally hurt her husband.
Mrs. Smith remained closed-mouthed. She watched him walk out the back door, her face puckering as if she might cry. Then she nodded her head to go. “I won’t be taking up any more of your time.”
All the words she might say caught in Dez’s throat as she twisted her fingers, mute and uncertain, accompanying Mrs. Smith back to the front door. She thought about how no one knew that she had been the first one to find Stan drowned. She had seen his twisted ankle with her very own eyes. An obvious accident. But telling this woman she’d seen her husband dead in the river would do no good and only raise questions. I found him but by the time I saw Dwight and Wendell, they already knew about him. It wouldn’t change a thing.
On the front steps, Mrs. Smith’s face darkened. “I’ll have to sell that, what with the funeral expenses,” Mrs. Smith said, meaning the Ford.
Dez remembered Stan talking about how his wife had gone to the welfare last year, how they had grudgingly given her oatmeal. You got a husband and a fine boy? How had he managed to buy a spiffy Ford? He must have been a bad money manager, and now this woman had nothing.
It was an impulse. She told Mrs. Smith to hold on, then ran back to the kitchen, scribbled her signature on the back of the American Sunday Standard check, and rushed back outside.
As soon as she offered it, she knew it was the wrong gesture. Mrs. Smith refused it quickly, with a flat, protesting palm and disbelief that turned to deep distrust—a look that said Dez must either be positively bats or else somehow strangely guilty to give away money like that.
Dez pocketed the check but she didn’t know what to do with her body, her hands. “Are you staying in town?”
“Stan paid up his room, good for a week, so we’ll make use of it and head up to Athol for the funeral on Sunday.”
“I’m sure you will plan some nice readings. Stan mentioned he loved a poem by Longfellow. He recited a bit. It was lovely,” she said. She’d meant to look up that poem.
“He was always reciting that poem.”
25
There was a commotion going on inside the Brilliant, and when Dez walked in, conversation halted for a moment. As she looked from one keyed-up face to the next, Zeke Davenport filled her in. They had been discussing Ethel Smith’s suspicions.
“So there’s a postcard for you,” Ella said. “We all came up with it. Mysterious drowning.”
Pretending to consider the idea, Dez accepted the glass of water Helen put in front of her. “But the drowning was an accident,” she said.
“We can’t be sure of that.”
Bill Hoden spoke. “We were talking about the fact that Mrs. Smith might have a point. A man doesn’t just break his ankle and fall into the river.”
“And as I was just about to say,” Dick Adams said, drawing out his words, waiting for the attention he’d obviously enjoyed before Dez walked in, “I thought it was odd at the time, but—” He paused, and looked around at everyone. “But I saw the Jew truck going down the road to Pine Point yesterday, and that,” he said, slowing down to emphasize the importance of what he said next, “was where this Stanley Smith disappeared from.”
There was a general murmur of interested reaction, an urging to go on. Dez sipped her water with rising panic.
“Oh, Jacob’s a good fellow, just like his father,” Pete Masterson said. “No worries with Jacob Solomon.”
“He’s a very fine man,” Dez said. “I know him well.”
“But I remember it was funny-like,” Dick persisted, “it being so early in the morning. I remember thinking, What’s he doing in Cascade on a Tuesday? But more curious, What’s he up to Pine Point for? There’s nothing up there.”
Dez spoke calmly. “Why on earth would Jacob Solomon have anything to do with the death of the water man?”
Dick’s response was to look blank. No one else was forthcoming with any kind of reason.
“If Cascade’s gone, it’s one less town he can sell to!” Ella finally said.
“Oh, Ella,” Zeke said. “That’s nonsense, and it still has nothing to do with why one single man dead would make a difference to a big project like this.”
“Exactly,” Dez said. “Let’s not try to make something more out of the poor man’s death than it is.”
“We certainly don’t want to accuse anyone of anything,” Zeke said.
“Well, it was just odd seeing him up there, like I said,” Dick said.
“He’d have no cause to be involved in this,” Dez said. “The wife is grieving. She’s grasping at straws.”
“And that’s natural enough,” said Zeke.
“Let’s face it,” Ella said, regretfully. “He’d take triple helpings at my table. He was fat and a bit clumsy and probably plopped right into the water.”
Ella didn’t mean it to be funny, and no one thought the situation was funny, but the way she said it was funny nonetheless and people looked uncomfortably shamefaced.
Zeke took a stool at the counter and twirled one of the little vases between his own sausage fingers. Poking out of the vase were two daisie
s and a dandelion, and Dez remembered another dandelion, its fuzzy fluff trapped by her ear. She remembered, too, a wall of them, flattened by the wooden safety cover, the one they’d never fitted over the gap on top of the dam. She concentrated, trying to remember exactly how they’d left the area.
No, they’d never covered the treacherous little gap.
At the drugstore, Dwight and Wendell had arrived just ahead of her, accompanied by a stranger with graying temples who stood well over six feet tall. The man wore a dark suit and a smart fedora with a small red feather tucked into its dark band. He looked about briskly, clearly in charge, his poised, elegant demeanor reminiscent of the summer men who had once essentially ruled Cascade.
Asa emerged from the back room and the man introduced himself as Elliot Lowell, commissioner of the Massachusetts Water Board. He said they had come to inform Asa, as owner of the property, that someone had been trespassing on the land near Pine Point.
“People often do.” Asa spoke carefully. “I don’t post signs.”
Lowell explained—during their search for Stan, Dwight found the pond. He’d seen fresh digging, tampering that had gone on at the dam. “Someone did quite a bit of work in there.”
Asa, solid and respectable, frowned at them, giving away nothing.
“It looks like someone opened the old dam in there, then closed it,” Lowell said.
“Closed it?” Asa did well, hiding his reaction, Dez thought. He turned toward Carl Treadway, who had come in looking to refill a prescription, and held up a finger, a gesture that let Mr. Lowell, however important he was, know that he, Asa, was important, too. Then he gave his attention to Lowell. “That dam’s been closed for years.”
“Oh, I can assure you it was opened.”
“How can you be sure?” Dez asked.
Lowell turned toward Dez, eyebrows arched, acknowledging her for the first time. “Because that pond on the other side of the dam’s pretty near full. It couldn’t have filled up with rain since there hasn’t been much. We thought maybe this Mr. Smith found it open and tried to close it, but it’s difficult trying to open and close that thing, too much for one person, we think, and those of us who tried scraped up our hands quite a bit.” He opened his hands, which bore abrasions similar to the ones on Dez’s own.
She pressed her palms flat against her dress.
“Why does all this matter? What is your point?” Asa asked.
“I’m sorry, you mean you don’t know?” Lowell said.
Asa looked questioningly at Dwight, at Wendell.
“We found his body at the base of the dam,” Dwight said.
Asa took that information in. “You’re saying you found this man’s body on my property?”
“Yes, we found him in the channel between the dam and the river.”
“What was he doing there?”
“No idea.”
Wendell spoke. “This wooden cover that looked like it used to seal the top of the dam,” he said, “well, it was off to the side, so there was a gap where he might’ve stumbled, if he’d a gone up there.”
Dez pictured the gap in her mind, the cover to the side, and felt the panic of remorse. Regardless of whether Stan died because of the gap, they should have been careful to leave the site safe.
“We had to notify you because the death happened on your property,” Lowell said, in a cordial, almost dismissive way. “And we wondered if you knew anything about the tampering. You obviously don’t. So unless we learn anything more, we won’t be bothering you again.”
“Of course. And how are the water tests going?”
Lowell was vague, noncommittal. “Stan oversaw the placement of the measurement markers. Now it’s just wait and see.” He puffed appreciatively on his cigarette, the holder clicking against his teeth. “I was here once, myself, not too many years ago, with Governor Fuller. We saw a production of Twelfth Night at your charming theater.”
“My father’s theater,” Dez said.
“Oh?” Lowell turned his attention to Dez in a manner that reminded her of the hungry fox of children’s stories. “So you are the woman artist.”
“Desdemona is my wife,” Asa said.
“I see,” Lowell said indulgently. “Bringing all of you a little notoriety. I hoped I would meet you, Mrs. Spaulding. I was sorry to hear that your father passed on.” He lifted his hat. “And sorry to see that the theater is closed. Had you planned to reopen it? It would be a shame to see a beautiful building like that destroyed.”
Asa’s face drained of color. Had Lowell played his hand?
“I plan to reopen it,” Dez said slowly.
“Well, if worse comes to worst,” Lowell said offhandedly, as he motioned that he was ready to leave and pushed the screen door, “maybe we can get it moved somewhere.”
Asa turned to Carl. “Could you come back in twenty minutes?” Then he beckoned Dez into the back room, where he dropped all pretense of composure.
“That area is secluded,” he said. “Who would know, and go to the trouble of closing it?” His face sagged and his eyes filled at the realization that all of his labor and expense was for nothing. He dropped into his chair, dropped his head into his hands. When he looked up, he said, “Who did it,” but there was no questioning inflection in his voice and she heard, “You did it.”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t deny it, it was all so obvious. In fact, she felt something close to relief.
But he repeated, “Who did it? Who?” and she realized the fact of his confusion in the midst of her own.
“I think it was Bud,” he said, finally. “He took the digging work on but I know he’d take cash for his land.” He closed his fist and squinted up at the ring of fluorescent light. “I think he wants it to happen. He’s desperate. And too proud for a loan, won’t ever take a loan, but no, he’ll sabotage me.”
“It was not Bud,” Dez blurted out. Life was bad enough for Bud right now without his best friend suspecting him of betrayal.
“The man’s capable of anything right now,” Asa said.
“We are all capable of anything, given the right circumstances, but—”
“Apparently.”
“Asa, I know Bud would not do this. His circumstances are not that dire. He’s got the welfare. His children are not starving.”
She couldn’t tell him.
She would have to tell him.
“He’s desperate. Emotionally desperate. Although—” He blinked, thinking hard, retracing steps. “They said one person alone couldn’t do it, and I know that’s true for a fact. You need leverage, one person pulling from up high, one down lower.”
“Think, Asa. Bud did not do this. Maybe, despite what everyone’s saying, Stan himself did it. He must have. A big man like Stan was strong. He probably saw that the river was draining into the pond and tried to stop it, that’s all.”
“Why would he care, really? And even if that’s true,” Asa said, the fingers of his right hand splaying across his chest in dismay, “then his death is still my fault because I fooled with the dam in the first place.”
And it didn’t matter that she assured him that regardless of what happened, Stan’s death had been an accident. He didn’t reply, just got to his feet and began to assemble the ingredients for Carl’s prescription.
26
They were outside the drugstore, packing up the Buick for Asa’s trip to Hartford on Saturday morning, when Dez learned just how bad the idle gossip had become.
“So Bud stopped by earlier,” Asa said. “He wanted to confide in me.”
Dez glanced up. It was still early; the streets were quiet, just a faint sound of distant hammering coming from the direction of the boys’ camp. Asa was bent over the front seat, fiddling with the gas pedal. “About what?”
“He said he saw Jacob near the Pine Point road, too, and now he’s wondering, naturally, why he was out there where there are no houses, nothing, two days in a row.”
Dez became conscious of her hands and arms,
still in the process of fitting a box of empty 7-Up bottles on the floor behind the front seat. She looked up at Asa, who had stopped his nonsense with the gas pedal and was watching her, waiting for her response.
“What are you saying, Asa?”
“Bud was thinking he should tell Dwight and Wendell.”
“Tell them what?”
“That Jacob was out there,” he said. “But you know Bud. It bothers him to have to point the finger at someone.”
“He doesn’t have to point any fingers at all.”
“True, but I told him, ‘You just go and tell Dwight and Wendell. Just tell them what you saw. It’s a fact you’re stating, not blame. Just stating a fact.’ Because what do we all really know of Jacob Solomon, anyway? Yes, his father was a good man, but that doesn’t mean he is.”
“I know him. Do you forget that? I know him very well. Has Bud spoken to them yet?” She had to curb an impulse to drop everything and run over to the police station. “Because why do this to Jacob? What possible motivation would he have to harm your dam or Stan or anything at all? This is crazy.”
“It’s fishy, though. Why was he hanging around there? Was he on my property? Maybe, and I don’t know why, and I don’t like it.”
“Jacob is an honest man.” She would have to try to get in touch with him, warn him before he showed up in Cascade tonight.
“Well, it’s up to the boys to decide what to do with Bud’s information. If he’s innocent of any wrongdoing, it will come out, won’t it?” He rested a hand on the car door. “Anyway, Bud got me thinking. When I get back I’m going to tell them I opened the dam, lay it all out on the line. If I’m in any way responsible, I need to own up to it.”
Mrs. Raymond opened the door and called to him. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared inside the store.
Dez got to her feet. The sun shone down on the top of her head. A boy ran by, calves flashing white above red socks. It was Saturday. Only a week had passed since she’d soared with the first Sunday Standard publication. Now she had plummeted from those heights, and it was as if it had happened to another person. Her next installment would appear by late afternoon but she felt far removed from it.
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