Henry decided to walk.
The walking cleared his head. He was not really worried about Della. She could take care of herself. She could be doing anything. She could be at the supermarket. She could be visiting an old friend. She could be at the movies. But, he just wanted to see her. Little more than a week ago, he would not have done this. If she had not answered her phone, he would have assumed she was fine and he would have called her again in the morning. Now he couldn’t wait. Life was changing all of a sudden. He wondered if he was too old for changes like this.
Della’s roommates were both students and still gone for the summer. She was the big sister. She did not like being thirty-three. She had said once to him that she wanted to “stay in touch with what was going on.” He had warned her it wouldn’t work. She would just become a voyeur observing their habits. Della had bragged, “They’re the ones who watch me! They don’t seem to have any energy.”
Henry sympathized with her roommates.
No one answered the doorbell. He stared up the face of the building toward her windows.
“Look under the flowerpot on the right.”
The voice from behind startled him, even though he knew it immediately. Bob walked across the street from where his Jeep sat in the open space by a fire hydrant.
“Right.” Henry tilted the large pot on edge. It was a foolish place to keep a key. He would have to speak to her about it.
“I was going to wait here, but if you’re going to go up. … Well, I guess I’ll wait here anyway. I don’t want to get towed.”
The apartment was dark. Henry guessed she had not been home since that afternoon. It was a messy place. Della was not much of a housekeeper. But he knew that already.
Scotch-taped on the living room wall was a photograph. He had to turn on the light to see that it was a picture of him. She had taken it the day they had gone to Crane’s Beach, and it took him a moment to realize it was another of her small jokes—taped up in about the same place on her wall as he had hung the picture of Sasha in his own living room.
Her bed was unmade.
A box of breakfast cereal and a bowl were on the kitchen table. He thought that might be from the previous day because she had eaten at his apartment that morning, but the milk was not dry in the bowl. She was obviously one of those people who ate cereal any time of the day. Another habit he would have to get used to. At least she had been home recently.
He scanned the CDs in the rack by her couch.
What did the two of them have in common? Movies? She liked foreign films. He couldn’t stand them. She liked pop singers and he was fond of classical music. Food. They both liked greasy food.
The bookcase by her door was overfilled with paperback bestsellers, mostly Oprah books. She read them on the subway to work and at lunch, and the spines of the books were bowed and creased.
What was going on here? What was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he sitting at home reading a book himself? … But then, Bob had used the word. Bob had said it without a thought.
Henry brushed at the dust on the clear plastic cover of the record player. He drew a heart in it. He was in love with Della. Simple enough.
So where was she?
He went down the stairs and out the door, expecting to see Bob there, still waiting. The Jeep was there, the motor running, with Bob inside. Someone else was with him. When Henry looked through the glass, Della did not seem happy to see him. Henry went around and climbed in the back.
“I’m sorry …” She was not given to apologizing. He wondered what she had done. “I wanted to talk to Barbara. I thought I would surprise you. You always say she’s the best. And she needs help … I thought I could volunteer. I could do it weekends. And I could learn something about books. I would love to know more about books. We could talk more about books together, and you wouldn’t haven’t to explain everything to me.”
Bob groaned and put his head against the glass of the window on the driver’s side.
“That’s okay …” Henry started to say.
“Well, it was pretty stupid, really. I didn’t call and make an appointment. I didn’t want her thinking about it too much. I mean, she still loves you. She might not want me around. But she wasn’t there. Nobody was there.”
“They close at eight.” Henry said. His eyes caught the dashboard clock—8:15.
“This was before. This was about seven-thirty. I went thinking I could ask her to have a cup of coffee with me after she closed. But the place was dark.”
That did not make sense.
“The tyranny of the door,” Henry said, out loud. “There must be something wrong …”
Bob turned to him.
“Did you say tyranny? What tyranny?”
Henry leaned forward from his seat. “Barbara says it all the time. ‘The tyranny of the door.’ The door must be opened at a certain time, and closed at another. One of the first laws of retailing. Barbara believes in rules like that. She wouldn’t break them. Closing the store early would not be like her.”
Bob shrugged, “Maybe she was feeling sick.”
“She has people she can call. She could have called me. Anyway, Sharon would have been there.”
“Maybe something happened …” Della said
Henry asked, a little too loudly, “Like what?” Why was he overreacting to everything all of a sudden? He touched Bob’s shoulder. “Can I use your cell phone?”
Della kept speaking as Henry called the store, and then Barbara’s apartment. “I knocked. I knocked, but the lights were out. The street was pretty busy.”
Henry asked, “All the lights?” Barbara’s phone buzzed repeatedly in his ear.
Della said the words again. “All the lights.”
Henry took a larger breath and tried to calm his voice. “She always leaves a few lights on, so people can look through the window at the books.”
Bob said, “Maybe there was a power outage …” But the words had no conviction.
“Maybe,” Della said, “but the lights were on next door.”
Bob offered, “Maybe there was a robbery.”
There was a brief silence as Bob’s question lingered in the air.
Della’s words were not a question. “Bob. Could you please drive us to Alcott & Poe. Please.”
It took a very long fifteen minutes to reach Newbury Street. Henry did not speak. There was too much crowding his mind. He was already angry now, for not thinking this all through beforehand. He might have anticipated some of this—perhaps all of it.
Della said, “I guess it’s good I went, after all,” into the silence.
Bob shook his head as if it were all hopeless. “I can’t understand why you would volunteer to work in a bookshop. There’s no future in books.”
Henry could not wait for the slow crawl of Newbury Street traffic and got out running a block away. He could hear Della behind him.
As she had said, all the lights were out. Both locks on the door were engaged.
“I could kick it down, but it would seem pretty stupid if it’s just a blown fuse or something really mundane.”
Della said, “Barbara can change a fuse, can’t she?”
Henry did not answer. He decided to try the back. He knew, from long ago, that he could reach one of the second-floor windows from the fire escape, and if the catch had not been changed, he could slip it open with his pocketknife. He had actually done it once when he had forgotten his own keys.
The “rat fence” which surrounded the parking area at the rear had been installed to keep the bums from using the space behind the building as a toilet, and only secondarily to stop rats from getting in through the open doors as they loaded or unloaded the store van. The chain link was woven with flat metal slats, which made seeing into the area from street level difficult even in the daylight. It was obvious from the pool of dark as he approached that the floodlights, which were always on for safety, were out as well.
The sound of the engine of the van reached Henry even b
efore he grabbed at the links of the fence. Any hope he had that this was all some kind of mistake was suddenly lost. His fingers ached on the metal. The slats made getting a foothold more difficult, forcing him to pull his weight up and over the top rail.
The van idled in the space in front of the closed loading door, the same boxy old Ford he had driven years before. He had been with Barbara when she bought it, already used. It appeared to have been repainted, and the gold lettering of the Alcott & Poe name caught the ambient light, but he could not see through the windshield. His jeans caught on the cut edge of a link and ripped as he dropped down into the darkened enclosure. He landed clumsily.
He tried the van doors and then shouted, “Do you see a brick?”
Della had just pulled herself to the top of the fence behind him and now looked from her vantage point, before jumping back. At the rear, where the back of the van nearly touched the wall, he found a vacuum cleaner hose curling down from the side vent window. Grey duck tape had been plastered around it to keep it in place. He ripped it free, and exhaust fumed at his face. When he grabbed the open edge of the small window, bracing his weight against the wall, part of the glass broke loose in his hands, but the space it left offered little light on the interior. He had calculated that his body might just fit through, when he heard Della’s voice.
“I’m throwing it over. Watch out.”
The shadow of the brick arched in the air and landed roughly on the roof of the van. Henry jumped to grab it, stepped up on the front bumper, and then shattered the windshield as Della came over the fence. His body slipped easily on the small bits of glass as he twisted through to the passenger seat headfirst and reached for the van lights before he was completely in. Someone was lying on the open metal floor at the back. The stink was suffocating.
“Move away. Get away,” were the only words that came to mind, using what breath he had.
Della jumped for the side.
Henry rolled into the driver’s seat, shifted gears, and stepped on the gas. The fence buckled as the bumper struck the closed gate. He backed the van up again until he heard the crunch of metal against the brick of the wall, shifted gears, and stepped on the gas again. The fence gave way, folding the chain link over the shattered window.
Bob had made it to the end of Newbury Street using his horn as well as portions of the sidewalk, and then come around and down the alley from the wrong direction, a police cruiser blaring at him from behind. He arrived at the rear of the store just as the Alcott & Poe van broke through the fence and blocked the way.
Henry jammed the shift into park and slipped through into the back, trying not to stumble now over the body he already recognized. The back doors gave way when he turned the handle. Barbara lay facedown in the dust of the rusted metal floor. He grabbed her hands to pull her free of the fumes. The gloves she was wearing came loose, and he pulled them off. Her hands were warm. He felt suddenly dizzy, but then, he had not taken a breath in what might have been minutes.
Later, he thought it all through repeatedly as he sat in a small waiting area near the emergency room at Boston City Hospital. Bob had taken Della home.
A young woman sat beside him, whimpering. A man with one hand wrapped in bandages sat across the narrow space, his eyes on the woman. They were the only ones left after a rush of late-night emergencies had filled the room earlier. Thankfully, Henry did not have to wait longer. The police had questioned him right there, shortly after he arrived. Another officer spoke with him about an hour later. Someone came through to ask if he knew what kind of insurance Barbara had. He told them he was pretty sure she had none. Then a nurse came through and told him that Barbara was conscious and talking. They would not let him see her, but if she was talking, she was going to be okay.
The old van was rusted out underneath. Barbara’s penny-saving had saved her life. The leaks of air from below had forestalled what would have happened given a little more time.
The police told him about a note found on the printer in the office. Henry had not seen it, but he had explained that it was not likely to have been written by her. Barbara had wanted to die, it said. The Barbara he knew would live through anything just to be able to say she had. They suggested she was depressed. He had argued that she was unhappy, but not depressed. She had options. “What are the options?” she would say to almost any problem.
Henry got a cab home. The sky had gone to grey with morning. He was exhausted and fell asleep in his Morris chair.
The knock on the door that awoke him was not the one he might have expected.
Sharon had pinned her hair back carelessly, one blond wisp clung below her chin like a necklace. Her pale skin had darkened beneath her eyes, but her cheeks were reddened, without makeup, in a flush. She brushed the hair back with a finger. It fell again. He noticed two of the nails on her right hand had been cut short. He was sure she had been doing a fair amount of crying.
“I’m sorry to wake you. I’m so sorry. The police came this morning and told me what happened. I just wanted to hear it from you. They wouldn’t give me any details.”
He felt numb, as if the little sleep he had gotten were worse than staying awake. He did not want to be facing Sharon at that moment. He did not know what the right words might be.
“She’s okay. We got to her in time.”
Sharon’s eyes darted back and forth at his own.
“Did she say what happened?”
“I wasn’t allowed to talk to her. But she was talking.”
Sharon shook her head, bewildered.
“How did you know? Why were you there?”
“Luck. Barbara’s luck. I told you she was a survivor. … Della went to talk with her last night. I could not explain why in a million years. Just the way Della is. But the store was closed. … Why was it closed?”
Sharon raised her shoulders with her hands out.
“Barbara said she was feeling a little sick. She wanted to go home early.”
“She was feeling that bad?”
He knew the doubt was in his voice.
“It was nearly closing time anyway … I am so sorry, now, that I left. I thought it would be okay.”
“You left with her?”
“No … we had been arguing. Money problems. She stayed behind. She wanted to finish something, she said. I asked her if she wanted help. She told me to go home. She was still angry with me, I think.”
“Then what happened?”
“Karen, one of the part-timers, was there. We left together
… And then the police came this morning. The police said there was a note.”
“So they said.”
Sharon’s eyes widened, but there was nothing he could read in that soft blue.
“What do you mean?”
“Barbara is not likely to write a note on a computer. Hell, she even hand-letters her shelf labels. And she’s not the type to commit suicide.”
“But you found her.”
“I found her—on her stomach. Barbara never lies on her stomach. She always said she wasn’t comfortable on her stomach. She can’t sleep that way. Her boobs are too big. Someone put her down that way. And it saved her life. The rotten bottom of that truck let in enough air for her to survive.”
Sharon’s mouth opened, first without words.
“I don’t understand. You think somebody tried to kill her?”
“I do …”
“Just because she was on her stomach?”
“And the gloves.”
“The gloves?”
“She was wearing gloves. It’s easy to guess why. Whoever did this was trying to hide their own fingerprints. And Barbara’s fingerprints couldn’t have been there either. Have you ever seen Barbara wear gloves? I never have. Did you ever see her close the store early? I never have.”
“Then you think this was planned?”
She said it with a grimace of horror at the idea.
He let a moment pass. He wondered if “planned” was the right word.
“Yes.”
Again her lips moved before the word was spoken. “Who?”
She had already lost what color he had seen in her face before. Her lips remained shaped by that last word, as if she might begin to whistle.
“You.”
Her eyes went wide again.
“Me? You’re kidding! Me?” She smiled oddly and backed away.
He said, “Who else?”
Her shoulders fell and her neck craned forward. “I left! Ask Karen. I was gone!”
“If you did, you came back.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“You’re saying I tried to murder somebody. Seriously? That’s crazy. How would I get her to stay in the van?”
“I can only guess. Did you drug her? I told the cops to look for her last coffee somewhere around the desk in the office. That’s where she did the bookkeeping every night when it got quiet, around six or seven, right? If it’s there, I’ll bet it has something else in it beside coffee. If it’s not there, then there is another reason why.”
Sharon straightened her back now.
“Why would I do this?”
“To save your investment.”
“But the business depends on Barbara.”
“You could sell the books for more than she owes you.”
“You’re crazy.” She said it oddly, like a little girl.
He could not be so sure of the thing that had been on his mind since lying in the woods in Maine. It was far less certain. But it seemed part of a weave of events that all became one fabric now.
“And I think something else that’s crazy—about the manuscript. You re-wrote that, didn’t you? It was not the same one that Jim wrote, was it?”
A Slepyng Hound to Wake Page 22